There’s an incurable, uncompromising divide in the demands made by horror fans, something to the effect of I want totally original content and I also want it to be exactly like the films I watched growing up. In a category that can appear so sprawling at first glance, the subgenres of horror actually function more like various wooden steeds on a grotesque and nostalgic carousel whose centripetal motion promises at least one rush of the blood before the ride stops. Among its many other achievements, the 2026 Faces of Death is the dizzy aftermath of a psychopath taking that same ride the rest of us passively revel in.
Barbie Ferreira, Josie Totah, and Dacre Montgomery star in this sadistic meta slasher that will cleanse your palate of any recent stabs at reboots and franchise extensions. It’s brutal, it’s sticky, and if you long to see a team of filmmakers having the most fun with classic practical effects, it’s here for you. Ferreira’s Margot is down to earth, relatable, and deeply traumatized by a dark past she can’t seem to escape thanks to social media, which also happens to be her job. She spends her days in a charcoal gray, windowless cubicle, paid to doomscroll content for censorship oversight that bots might miss — particularly any remotely sexualized content — but the gore only gets flagged if Margot’s reasonably sure it’s not fake. Imagine the levels of desensitization one can experience in a video clearance department where the task is to analyze snuff-style reels a frame at a time in order to decide if they’re real. Except Margot isn’t desensitized, much to the dismay of her boss, whose main concern is increasing viewership. Charli XCX also works there.
Much like the output of Kino, the TikTok-esque social media platform that employs Margot, viewers can consume this story without the lore, but it’s a layered IYKYK tale out of the gate. The original 1979 mondo mockumentary Faces of Death, in all its dementedly artsy and dreadful glory, would likely be slandered as “AI slop” if a true remake were to emerge today – it would be essentially impossible to recreate the mythos that surrounded those films and their claim to notoriety that carried a three-decade rep of you just had to be there. While most of the footage in the original was either taken from medical studies or otherwise staged, certain segments were alleged to contain real death captured on film. If you’d like to create your own version, turn the parental controls off on your Facebook… of death. [Not advised]
This plot-driven homage to Faces of Death from filmmaking duo Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei is as much a tribute to the zeitgeist around discovering those original films as it is to the movies themselves. Some of the most iconic scenes of the original are repurposed in a way that is better witnessed on screen than described. Faces of Death doesn’t skimp on gore, but it manages to avoid the woeful dullness of torture porn. That is all to say this film will probably never be able to claim that it’s banned in 46 countries, but it’s not for the weak of heart either.
Thanks to our chronically online conditioning and the bombardment of very real violence to which we are exposed at every swipe and click, our brains have been rewired to expect new sensationalism everyday, and this film’s digital-age antagonist Arthur (Montgomery) came prepared to deliver. The pacing feeds off of an adrenaline-surging reward system reminiscent of Red Dragon, where the tension is expected but the timing results in a rush. Montgomery fans who found themselves both enticed and terrified by his performance as Billy Hargrove in seasons 2 and 3 of Stranger Things will find a silken delivery of the latter here. Anyone familiar with having a crush who creeps you out too much to invite home will find this relatable.
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The camerawork is confrontational and stylish, with an absolute flourish for splattering the boldest red your eyes can comprehend across everyday suburban life. Imagine the cinematographer for Garden State made a giallo. Recent cinemagoers will recognize Isaac Bauman’s dynamic and high-contrast work from They Will Kill You. Some people are just blessed with an eye for blood.
The big win of this new vision for Faces of Death is the sense of urgency it creates for audiences witnessing the horror unfold through Margot’s perspective. She is moody, exhausted, and fame-avoidant – but we discover with her in real time that she can also kick some serious ass. Although this movie represents a world of influencers we each know mostly by their online identity, every supporting character down to the most minor delivers an authenticity — hello, up and coming scream queen Josie Totah — that smaller productions, particularly horror, often miss out on. I wanted every single character to survive, but as the repurposed moniker implies, it’s just not that type of movie.
