FACES OF DEATH (2026)

In theaters now from IFC Films and Shudder!
Directed by Daniel Goldhaber.
Written by Daniel Goldhaber, Isa Mazzei.
Check out the trailer here!!

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) is a content supervisor for a YouTube like company, determining whether or not submitted videos are approved by the company’s content standards. Basically she flags inappropriate content like drug use, abuse, misinformation, and the wrong political views…I kid. Just kidding YouTube overlords. Juuuuuust kidding. And of course, videos of people being harmed or murdered in some gruesome way. When a strange video of a beheading comes up on her screen, Margot is perplexed as to whether it is fake or real, but plays on the safe side and flags it as inappropriate. Later, a similar video of a man dying in the electric chair pops up, and again, Margot is not clear on what to do with it. So, she shows it to her boss (Jermaine Fowler), who tells her to give it a pass, writing it off as edgy, deep fake content—which is what the kiddies want these days. But Margot isn’t convinced. See, Margot presents as a responsible worker, destined for upper management, but inside she is wrecked with guilt involving her own daring video she took with her best friend dancing on railroad tracks. When her friend is killed and the video goes viral, Margot is dubbed “The Train Girl” wherever she goes and decides to make it her purpose to make sure damaging content is addressed online. Turns out, the videos Margot is noticing are real murders, staged by a man (played by Jared Leto wannabe Dacre Montgomery) who is obsessed with the late 70’s shockumentary series FACES OF DEATH and recreating deaths featured in the film. As Margot investigates the poster of these videos, she gets on the killer’s radar and he begins targeting her for his next snuff film.

I was like many of you back in the 80’s, tooling around the video store and going through the horror section from top to bottom, one at a time, begging my mom to let me see whatever VHS box art appealed to me the most. I remember it succinctly. We had memberships at multiple video stores because, if the movie we wanted to see was out at one place, we could try another. Well, when we didn’t find anything cool at our usual shop, we went to the more mom-and-pop shop called Sounds Easy video. They had a huge horror section and a lot of them were ones that didn’t show up in the more mainstream video stores by the Lima Mall. So every time I got to peruse the video section, I was stoked. That’s where I picked up FACES OF DEATH and watched it for the first time at a way-way-waaaay too young age. This is one of the few movies I remember exactly where I got it from, where I watched it, and who I watched it with. It was that impactful and I wore it as a badge of honor when I got to school the following Monday telling all of the kids whose parents didn’t let them see this kind of film about every single detail. So, my connection with the film, today’s movie runs deep.

I want every movie to succeed, especially horror movies because the better they are, the more opportunities to make good ones will be had. We live in a day and age where very talented filmmakers are making awesome movies. Some of them remakes. So, I was hopeful, this new FACES OF DEATH would deliver. The original FACES OF DEATH was not Oscar caliber, so I didn’t expect this remake to be that either. But I was hoping that the makers of the film would nail the concept of FACES OF DEATH and deliver a fresh take on it. But did it? Well, yes and no. More no than yes. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

FACES OF DEATH, for some reason, most likely because the filmmakers really have a boner for the SCREAM series as it seems every Gen Y kid does these days, is really SCREAM with less appealing characters, no mystery as to who the killer is, and a few messier gore sequences. The killer even has a white mask not completely unlike Ghostface. It does feature some of the more memorable kills from the original mockumentary, but these are staged murders. The killer in the remake abducts successful online and television personalities and uses them to recreate these scenes and this takes a whole lot of work to do.

You see, the killer in this film feels as if he is an arteest. He pumps himself up for the kills in his little basement surrounded by mannequins. He meticulously sets up the killings and stalks his intended victims on the internet. And he even has an abhorrence for touching blood. What does any of this have to do with the original FACES OF DEATH? Absolutely fucking nothing. And that’s the main problem with this movie.

See, the point of the original FACES OF DEATH was that our end can come any time, anywhere, from out of the blue, and at the same time occurs all around us, and by having a meticulous killer set up these elaborate kills sort of shits on all of that. It’s like this was some kind of shelved script for something completely different and the FACES OF DEATH part is almost seen as an afterthought.

Modernizing the film in the present day really feels like a stretch as well. Yes, the internet can be bad. It can indoctrinate people into thinking in particular ways and it also numbs people to violence and promotes aggressive tendencies to the point of normalcy. There could be a smart script that ties this back to a more innocent time like the early eighties, where FACES OF DEATH was banned in places and seen as something that could damage one’s psyche and soul an comparing that to how the modern day, on a daily basis, we are inundated with the worst of humanity. Still, back then were simpler times. These death scenes were enticing. Just like slowing down at a car wreck or trying to pause your VCR at the exact second when some kind of gross image or video pops up. The taboo subject matter made it something about it that made people want to see it. But what was taboo is passe today, and I wish FACES OF DEATH would have leaned more into those themes.

Instead, there’s a lot of talk about the algorithm, the zeitgeist, and hits and likes. I know that’s the currency these days, but it is not the most interesting subject matter to make a movie about. Honestly, the most frightening aspect of this film was how easily the killer was able to track down the protagonist, but this is something that happens so fast, it feels like the filmmakers didn’t realize how truly scary this is. It’s that type of short-sightedness that is prominent in FACES OF DEATH. They would rather focus on an internet Karen who made a fatal Tik Tok video and pops Adderall like they were breath mints. It all feels so 2016, where policing the internet was the fashionable thing for those overly-distracted by social media. I mean, when the Netflix docuseries DON’T FUCK WITH CATS is mentioned almost as much times as the movie it’s based on, there’s a problem here.

On top of all of that, through the course of this film, the protagonist Margot becomes more and more unlikable as the film goes on. She starts out as this damaged, somewhat noble soul, looking to make a difference. But the story makes her jump through so many hoops in order to push the plot forward, it’s hard seeing her as a character and more of just a plot device. Margot feels strongly about how these videos are inappropriate, and though she is right about them being real, she goes about all of it in the most foolish way. She ends up doing exactly what she is teaching new recruits at the video farm—takes the work home and allows it to get to you. That can make for an interesting character, someone who says one thing and does the exact opposite, but Margot ends up doing the stupidest things in this film that you end up hating her by the end.

Now, it doesn’t help that Barbie Ferreira makes her face contort like Toni Collette in HEREDITARY with a heavy case of tardive dyskinesia. The gal is decent, yet somewhat whiny for the entire film, but in the climax, she literally ugly cries and even ugly screams almost directly into the camera and…it’s just not fun. It’s not fun to look at. Plus, I am all for body positivity, as Ferreira is a bigger girl, but let’s be real with what she can and cannot do. There’s a scene before the climax where Margot is running away from the killer. She runs almost directly into his as he pops out from around the corner. She turns and runs in the other direction, though it’s obvious the killer still has a shot at her. The killer aims, and somehow the gravity-challenged Margot is able to swiftly evade the very in-shape killer, and runs off into the woods. Instead of simply taking aim and shooting the slow trotting Margot, he lowers the rifle and screams at her in…what, frustration? Makes no sense. This guy could have walked the girl down without breaking a sweat.

I don’t want to linger around much more on FACES OF DEATH, but the Scoobie-Doo ending has to be addressed. Having just endured the worst Ghostface reveal in the series history with SCREAM VII, I feel a horrible trend is upon us. The villain monologue is a movie cliché, but if you want your film to be watchable, you have to turn away from doing what has been done before. Sure, there needs to be a moment where all is revealed, but these monologues are getting downright painful and mainly it’s because the bulk of the film is dedicated to everything but the point of the movie and in the final moments the filmmakers realize they have to make this resonate somehow and simply tell the movie to the audience. Not only does our killer stop everything to maniacally laugh and tell his motivation, but Margot has to do it too. To make matters worse, the film relies on a final beat, where the killer is caught on tape confessing, that was ancient when the original FACES OF DEATH was released.

FACES OF DEATH has a few gory kills. Though the killer feels like a dime-store Jared Leto, at least he is trying to make this character distinct. But Ferriera gets more intolerable by the minute in this movie and the plot doesn’t do her any favors as she attempts to hurdle all of the cliches this film is constructed with. Apart from copying the kills from the movie and name dropping the name of the film, FACES OF DEATH really has nothing thematically to do with this iconic film. Somewhere, there’s a version that compares today’s online culture with the more innocent age of the Video Nasties. This, sadly, ain’t it.