‘Faces of Death’ Review: Moderating Terror In Remake

After years of collecting dust on a shelf like a forgotten VHS tape, Daniel Goldhaber’s remake of the 1978 cult classic horror film, Faces of Death, is finally being released this week after seven years of development. Feature First attended the World Premiere of Faces of Death during BeyondChicago at the historic Music Box Theatre on April 5. Read our Faces of Death review below.

Faces of Death follows a content moderator for a TikTok-like social media platform named Margot Romero (Barbie Ferreira) who stumbles across a series of violent murders done in a theatrical manner that are posted to the website. After failing to get her coworkers’ (Charli XCX & Jermaine Fowler) attention on the matter, Margot and her roommate (Aaron Holliday) decide to do some internet sleuthing as she tries to find the culprit of these viral snuff films. In an age where violence is quite literally on our timelines with easy access (I unwillingly saw a video of a woman being run over by a car on X just hours before seeing this film), I was incredibly interested to see how Goldhaber and his filmmaking partner, Isa Mazzei, would tackle the subject of modern snuff films being so easily accessible. For the most part, I’d say this is one of the best horror remakes of all time. Sure, the tone is a bit messy and all over the place, but so is the internet. 

Initially, during the first twenty minutes, I was a bit apprehensive to the oddly humorous tone of the film, feeling it really didn’t suit the narrative at all. However, as time went on, I became more and more engaged with the insanity being portrayed on screen. Just like Ari Aster’s Eddington, Daniel Goldhaber’s Faces of Death feels like an apt portrayal of the everyday absurdity witnessed on the internet, and the effects that can have on one’s psyche. I was very fortunate enough to see this at the world premiere with a Q&A featuring Goldhaber & Mazzei after the film, as they shared some genuinely fascinating information.

Such as the fact that many of the videos Margot sees at her job are from real life, while there are some videos made specifically for the film, not all are, giving the narrative a real sense of a lived in internet that exists outside of the story itself. On top of that, I highly recommend watching the original 1978 John Alan Schwartz film before this movie, because it will give audiences familiar with the source material an even deeper connection to this remake, as the original is used as a baseline for this concept to build off of. It doesn’t feel right to label this as a remake either, because it really does feel like something entirely new, even though some moments are familiar.

Goldhaber and Mazzei’s script is anchored by incredibly solid filmmaking, with gorgeous visuals from cinematographer Isaac Bauman (there is a really impressive one take sequence in this), a hypnotic electronic score by Gavin Brivlik, and some great lead performances from Barbie Ferreira, and Dacre Montgomery as a gleefully sadistic psychopath. Montgomery adds so much depth to the character of Arthur Spevak that he feels like somebody you’ve come across in a supermarket that made you uncomfortable, he really is the true highlight of the film.

While I overall thought this was a great examination of the absurdity and horror of the internet, I have some issues in its character motives, the truly awful performance Charli XCX turns in (unfortunately she cannot do a convincing American accent), and the heavy-handedness of the messaging that holds me back from saying I adored this. However, if you have the stomach for extreme gore and want a thought-provoking absurdist horror movie to watch this upcoming weekend, look no further than Faces of Death.

Faces of Death was written by Isa Mazzei & Daniel Goldhaber based off of John Alan Schwartz’s 1978 film of the same name. The film was directed by Daniel Goldhaber and stars Barbie Ferreira, Dacre Montgomery, Josie Totah, Charli XCX, Jermaine Fowler, and Aaron Holliday. 

IFC and Shudder will release Faces of Death in theaters nationwide on April 10.