Horror Reimagining Gargles Excrement And Disguises It As A Fresh Take In Theaters

By Chris Sawin
| Updated 12 seconds ago

Faces of Death began as a 1978 snuff film disguised as a mondo horror/documentary with the appeal that all of the deaths in the film were authentic. Some fake sequences were produced, but the film utilized pre-existing footage of actual death and the horrors that followed afterward.

Despite facing various controversies and being banned in many countries, the first film proved a massive success ($35 million at the box office on a $67,000 budget), and Faces of Death quickly became a franchise.  The film would spawn three legitimate sequels, three “sequels” that were highlight reels from previous films (only one included new footage), and a Fact or Fiction entry that disproved some of the franchise’s more well-known scenes. There are also two more entries, but Faces of Death VII is Nick Bougas’s 1989 film Death Scenes, with a new title, while Faces of Death 8 is a bunch of random gore sequences from all over the world with no narration and no credits.

The New Faces Of Death

The franchise had been dead for 25 years until the film was reimagined and released in 2026. Directed by Daniel Goldhaber and co-written by Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei (CAM, How to Blow Up a Pipeline), Faces of Death follows Margot Romero (Barbie Ferreira, Euphoria), a content moderator for Kino Moderation. Kino is presented like an online platform similar to TikTok, with a comment section that mirrors Instagram.

It’s Margot’s job to flag inappropriate internet videos, whether they’re too sexual, feature drug use, or are too violent. Even though she’s only had the job for a couple of months, Margot has already seen everything and is kind of desensitized to the nastiness of the internet. She typically allows a lot of the violent content she sees because it is noticeably fake.

A beheading video sticks with Margot more than the others, and a few days later, an electrocution video in the same style follows. Soon after, a man’s head is bludgeoned by two hammers held by mannequins before they scalp him and pretend to eat his brains. Margot wants to go to the police, but Josh (Jermaine Fowler, Night Patrol), her boss at Kino, doesn’t want the negative reputation for the platform and is still convinced none of it is authentic.

Arthur Spevak (Dacre Montgomery, Stranger Things) is kidnapping famous influencers and TV personalities. He injects them with fentanyl, holds them captive in cages, and then murders them in a way that mirrors a death from the original Faces of Death. Arthur uploads every one of his kills to Kino and is gaining a following. Since Kino has no intention of tracking what could be a murder spree being uploaded to the internet, Margot decides to take matters into her own hands.

The film is trying to say something about society. Everyone is glued to their phones these days, with an attention span of less than 10 seconds. Doom scrolling has become the new channel flipping, and everyone scrolls to the next thing if something doesn’t grab them immediately. Various forms of entertainment are available to us at our fingertips, and we take them for granted.

Faces of Death touches on how cruel we’ve become. People are dying just to make content, and nobody cares. It’s not them or anyone they know, so it serves them right. They’ve gotten what they deserve, and the person holding the phone is on to the next trend or video.

Nobody Cares If These Characters Become Train Jelly

But the issue is you don’t give a good Goddamn about anyone in this film. Everyone is an asshole, and you’re no more invested in Margot’s gay and horror film-obsessed roommate named Ryan (Aaron Holliday) than you are in Margot’s boss, Josh.

Margot’s big back story is that her best friend died while they were trying to make a viral video. They were dancing on train tracks as a train approached, and she slipped on gravel and became train jelly. Meanwhile, Arthur’s motivation is that people love remakes, and Kino seemed like a great place to gain a following. Margot even pulls the original Faces of Death VHS off the shelf and watches it in the film.

A Questionable Script Which Relies On Reddit

The film’s writing is questionable. Half of the film sees Margot turning to Reddit for answers, while the other half feels like it’s Barbie Ferreira staring at the camera, her mega unibrow screaming louder than any dumb facial expression she makes.

The Arthur Spevak character is poorly fleshed out. He’s a germaphobe, but that aspect literally leads to nothing. Dacre Montgomery also has the strongest performance in the film, but he’s a poor imitation of Patrick Bateman overall.

There’s also a sequence where Arthur is trying to intimidate his caged victims by angrily feeding them pizza. And later, Margot brushes her teeth with black toothpaste so intensely that you think her toothbrush is going to break in half. The fact that Ryan’s lipstick knife is the savior of the film on three separate occasions that can’t be detected by anyone or anything is so incredibly infuriating, too.

Throw This Cast In A Volcano

Meanwhile, Ferriera’s performance rides on her shrieking like a rabid marmot that also apparently chain-smoked since it became sentient in the womb; by the time the inevitable confrontation between Arthur and Margot finally arrives, you don’t root for a clear winner. You lust for a fictional double murder or some gruesome natural occurrence to swoop in and eject these two irritating jackasses directly into the sun or nearest volcano. Never has the giant foot from Monty Python’s Flying Circus been needed or craved more.

You’d think that a horror film like Faces of Death would at least have some decent kills, but even those are uninspired and are more straightforward than anything else. Faces of Death feels like a lazy reboot; controversy has been replaced with apathy, and a cast of characters and performances you want nothing more than to reach through your screen and slap the s**t out of. Even the film’s meta aspects feel shoehorned in just to get that forced meme reaction: Leonardo DiCaprio enthusiastically pointing at the screen, a moment that is met instead with dizzying eye rolls and extreme facepalming.

Faces of Death (2026) is now playing in theaters.