REVIEW: Faces of Death [2026]

Rating: R | Runtime: 98 minutes
Release Date: April 10th, 2026 (USA)
Studio: IFC Films / Shudder
Director(s): Daniel Goldhaber
Writer(s): Daniel Goldhaber & Isa Mazzei / Gorgon Video (series Faces of Death)

Censorship is a slippery slope.

How do you remake a compilation film like Faces of Death? The entire allure of the original “video nasty” was that audiences weren’t sure whether what they saw was real or not. Trying to recreate that same sense of uncertainty is therefore impossible under the definition of what “remake” means as an entertainment format. Were they actually going to kill real people this time? Of course not. So, director Daniel Goldhaber and co-writer Isa Mazzei did the next best thing.

Because their inability to commit murder and/or pretend to do so without an instantaneous law enforcement inquiry refuting it doesn’t mean their characters can’t. This new entry into the franchise is thus a film about what it would look like if someone did take the assignment literally. It’s not even far-fetched to imagine someone would considering our culture’s affinity to accrue wealth and cachet through video content creation. Give the people what they want.

Let’s face it: people crave carnage. They want the jolt of adrenaline from finding and viewing something they aren’t allowed to see. The urban legend that surrounded John Alan Schwartz’s faux documentary was only ever the gateway into what my generation discovered during the infancy of the internet and websites granting access to Saddam Hussein’s death or ISIS beheadings. And it’s only become worse as short form video scrolling becomes a way of life.

Goldhaber and Mazzei’s approach to this project is nothing short of ingenious as a result. They introduce us to Margot (Barbie Ferreira), a content moderator at the country’s number one video app Kino who spends her day watching the footage users on the platform flag for indecency. She clicks “Allow” on the ones that are obviously fake. She clicks “Content warning” for those that straddle the line. And she clicks “Remove” on the clips with truly heinous subject matter.

Is it a perfect method to keep her company’s subscribers safe? Of course not. You could argue it isn’t even safer than letting an LLM do the job since Margot is just as susceptible to rejecting Narcan and condom tutorials as “drug use” and “sexual content” despite serving a necessary educational purpose within those realms. It’s not like it matters anyway either. Her boss (Jermaine Fowler) knows the bad stuff pays the bills. He advocates always erring on the side of allowance.

And that leads us to Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), the man behind a series of bloody videos that look fake with their mannequin supporting casts and overlaid audio of Michael Carr’s Dr. Francis B. Gröss from Faces of Death. Margot doesn’t think twice when allowing the first since it plays like a joke. The second instance gives her pause, though. Its victim is easily identifiable and the “special effects” look too real to discount. Is someone doing a bit? Is this a serial killer?

I forgot how old I am to be able to understand the user comment “This reminds me of Faces of Death.” Whereas it clicks automatically for those in the know (especially with Carr’s voice), however, Margot is clueless about the reference. So, she googles the title like anyone would to discover its history. She also finds it sitting on her horror-obsessed roommate’s (Aaron Holliday) VHS Shelf. (Why does he have two copies of Independence Day?!) The similarity is uncanny.

What follows is the inevitable race against time between someone with an insane theory no one believes and its perpetrator continuing to commit his crimes. Goldhaber and Mazzei are nothing if not process driven in the authenticity with which they present their narratives whether that be Cam or How to Blow Up a Pipeline, and they don’t disappoint here. They reveal exactly how Arthur would kill and how Margot would attempt to stop him.

We get the split-screen identity searches that serve as a reminder to never trust a link sent anonymously over the web. There’s the practical nature with which to endear yourself to a potential victim and the influencer ego that takes over to make you wonder if your physical safety might be less important than your virality when clicks and likes become synonymous with self-worth. Even the blatant tongue-in-cheek monologuing about remakes is as biting as it is silly.

That duality is the point. Goldhaber and Mazzei understand the absurdity of their premise just as much as they acknowledge the danger inherent to it. Their Faces of Death doesn’t reach the disturbing heights of Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms, but it does present the same commentary and themes in a more mainstream package with presumably greater appeal. Watching Margot’s co-workers (led by Charli XCX) and the police “enjoy” this content isn’t farce. It’s reality.

So too is public consciousness numbing itself to the stakes behind what they consume. It was one thing for John Alan Schwartz to blur the line between real death via archival footage and his staged approximations back in 1978. We still all received our news and truth from the same five outlets that operated with the integrity to position the greater good above profit. Now? With no sure way to confirm the validity of anything and infinite unvetted sources weighing in?

It’s easier to just assume everything is fake. To turn off our empathy and “enjoy” the violence in ways that systematically normalize it. And even if you can maintain a healthy distance from the videos themselves, are you immune to the politicized commentary normalizing their content in the background? Because being one step removed from the act doesn’t protect you from acquiring that same taste for blood and becoming complicit in it.

Don’t therefore disregard Margot’s backstory as just a throwaway mirror. It is very purposeful in both presenting the price of infamy and exposing the pain of morality. Because you could draw a line between her and Arthur to exploit the societal effects of content consumption and pretend volatile legislative bans will help rather than harm, but the real lesson is in how different their reactions to their place within that dichotomy. Bans only ever mask the real issues at-hand.

The juicy stuff is therefore in the ease of Fowler’s character ignoring Margot’s warnings, people giggling upon recognizing Margot from her viral moment rather than comforting her, and how criminals manipulate police into protecting them by weaponizing prejudices. Our world has never been more transparently broadcast than today. We should be connecting on a human level, not letting it divide, harden, and scare us into turning strangers into faceless statistics.