Faces of Death

I remember the original faces of death was really trending when I was in elementary school and the children would "smuggle" their VHS to each other to scare the shit out of the other children.

This movie is surprisingly good for a revisiting of faces of death. In a world where everything that matters is getting those likes in your social media posts, Margot goes to the extreme and sees her sister die in a dangerous attempt stunt to the camera. She later join the social media company to screen harmful content believing she could make a difference, but when she starts seeing videos reacting the faces of death segments that look real snuff movies, the company just doesn't give a shit. When trying to figure out where those videos are coming from by herself she gets tangled in the mess.

The movie is overall pretty good, the only suspension of disbelief was that the characters must be deaf, because fights are breaking out in their house and no one seems to hear it??

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.

https://bit.ly/DeadFace

Faces of Death for the social age, where gore and snuff are no longer regulated to behind the counter, illegally-sold Video Nasties, and cult film circles that shared videos around before early internet uploads. (Coincidentally I watch one such tape ‘Grave Robbing For Morons’, which think it a quaint little oddity). Point being, gore is mainstream now. What is shocking anymore? What offends? You can watch a fascist podcaster get slimed in 4K and tune in for your daily dose of live-streamed genocide now.

This a movie for the “All Fake” Tiktok caption era.

The mentions of Don’t Fuck With Cats, might seem slightly dated for 2026 as it was a doc that came out in 2019, but it absolutely works for me because I was actually shown one of Luka Magnotta’s snuff films in school - I vaguely remember him cutting a man up, before I turned away - it was that easily accessible. A Google search! Therefore I think the content moderation angle as a way into the discovery of the videos is a nice touch, I think it sells itself well, I’m sure people who do work similar jobs watch the craziest bullshit imaginable but just let shit go because they can’t be arsed to look into it more. Speaking of which, this could have very easily have become Red Rooms, if it went down a more “obsessed with the videos” route instead of doing one of my favourite horror tropes, A WOMAN INVESTIGATING AS PEOPLE THINK SHE’S CRAZY. Hey, if it ain’t broke! And Barbie Ferreira is a pretty solid Final Girl here too.

Dacre Montgomery channels Tom Noonan‘s Francis Dolarhyde from Manhunter, with flares of Ted Levine’s Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, in a performance I just utterly love. Freaky psychos. Gotta love em. It is very much a Thomas Harris villain in a slasher coded setting. And just to be a slasher nerd, the white face mask reminds me of the killer in Edge of the Axe (1988).

Overall, I’m shocked by this. I fucking loved it. It’s a slightly sleazy, 80s serial killer thriller - in the ilk of the previously mentioned Manhunter, Maniac, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, etc. - meets a late-90s/early-00s post Scream slasher movie in the vain of Urban Legend with just the right amount of grittiness found in the original Saw and The Human Centipede. All complimentary.

I am a die hard Scream fan. I just rated a new Faces of Death movie 5/5 and the latest Scream sequel 1/2 Star. Much to think about.

#Fod2024

This is a meta-remake
And it is a poor effort at that. It is too well-aware of itself, and its context, has some seriously strange casting-choices, and is at times shot as it deliberately trying to defuse any tension the scene might have. It is frustrating, because a movie like this could do something good, but it falls flat, and never truly gets up again.