‘Faces of Death’ review
Faces of Death has to be one of the all-time great concepts for a horror reboot. Rather than directly remake the 70s cult movie it’s named after, the film adapts and re-contextualizes it for the modern social media age, where shock content is all the rage. On paper, this is a great way to comment on the dubious nature of illicit content and how people use it to achieve notoriety. As you scroll through social media and do your best to avoid waves of disturbing videos, you’ll occasionally come across a few that make you think, “Please tell me that wasn’t real.” Unfortunately, Faces of Death squanders this compelling premise in favor of a camp tone that completely undercuts the upsetting subject matter at its core.
One of the most infamous “video nasties” as the Brits used to call them, the original Faces of Death shocked and disgusted audiences with its seemingly unsimulated gruesome depictions of death. I’ve never seen it—and probably never will—but anyone with passing knowledge of the film knows the majority of it is fake. It presents itself as a real documentary, but stages its snuff scenes with creative gore make-up. I first became aware of this film in the early YouTube era, as it’s the perfect type of vulgar object to find new life on social media in the same vein as 2 Girls 1 Cup and BME Pain Olympics (if you don’t know, keep it that way). The internet is a breeding ground for well-staged shock videos that make you question their authenticity.
Another major by-product of social media platforms is the ease with which you can re-contextualize a piece of art to create something new. All too often, you’ll come across videos that use bits of a song or audio from a movie to add atmosphere to their content. This set-up creates a perfect formula for a modern, compelling reboot of Faces of Death. A content moderator discovers videos re-creating scenes from the original film, and she can’t tell if she’s dealing with a creative horror artist or a meticulous serial killer? I’m so in! But the film’s glib attitude towards violence prevents the audience from engaging with its unsettling questions about the relationship between violence and infamy. It’s way more interested in stale thrills that aren’t scary or entertaining.
Daniel Goldhaber is clearly a gifted filmmaker. How to Blow Up a Pipeline made it on my top 10 list back in 2023. That scrappy action thriller demonstrated his skill at building suspense through economy of storytelling. And despite an 80s John Carpenter-inspired score, he managed to keep the film grounded in the real world with unshowy direction. In Faces of Death, he continues to demonstrate his skills behind the camera with slick transitions and some well-crafted scares featuring Dacre Montgomery’s deranged, clout-chasing killer. But the film dips too far into wacky 80s aesthetics for its shock factor to land.
If you’re going to set up scenes with people forced into elaborate death traps, I think it should be pretty upsetting to see the fear and panic in their eyes as the killer draws out their fate. But the film’s flippant portrayal of death puts a damper on these gruesome deaths. Case in point, our lead character has a tragic backstory that the film handles with all the weight of a Final Destination kill. The film never gives her or the audience any time to sit with this unimaginable pain. Maybe that’s the film’s way of reflecting how the internet handles violence, but the end result robs the characters of any humanity. The fact that the kills look so stylized and stagey detracts from that sinking feeling where you think, “Did I just watch someone die for real?”
In the absence of any true horror, we’re left with the film’s surface-level commentary on the current social media landscape. I enjoyed some of the subtle jabs at the hypocrisy of content moderation, where Barbie Ferreira’s character lets numerous violent videos through the gate but flags helpful drug PSAs and sex-ed videos for “drug use” and “sexual content.” But the majority of the film’s commentary boils down to “going viral” and “the algorithm.” During the climax, the villain explains that he recreated scenes from the original Faces of Death because “the algorithm loves remakes.” It does? Even for a luddite like me, that line doesn’t pass the sniff test.
The film leaves you untethered by its shallow characterization and stale thrills, so by the time it reaches the third act, all I could focus on were the lazy horror-movie contrivances. No one in the neighborhood hears those gunshots in broad daylight? Is that supposed to be a commentary on the lack of gun control in the South? Instead of pumping my fist at the climax and then mourning the fact that violence turned out to be the only answer to this film’s problem, I found myself asking, “Why did Charli XCX agree to such a nothing part?”
★★½