The New ‘Faces of Death’ is a Self-Conscious Slasher [Review]

Jack of all trades and master of none, Daniel Goldhaber’s ‘Faces of Death’ can’t decide how it feels about violence.

Faces of Death (2026), Independent Film Company & Shudder

Just the other day, I was scrolling through Twitter/X to read what my friends and most trusted movie critics had to say about some of the weekend’s new releases, when a video came up on my timeline of a child on a playground getting attacked by a dog. Nearby adults were useless at trying to help the kid, who was screaming, obviously in pain.

Somewhat alarmed, I went to the replies to try and figure out if the video was real or just well-hidden generative AI, but all I could find was a sea of faceless names with blue checkmarks (probably generative AI as well) commenting about all the things they would do in that situation in rather crude terms, like it was just some fun thought experiment, all the acts of violence they’d inflict on the animal, in defense of a hypothetical child.

Violence is everywhere, as is the sometimes unanswerable question of whether most of the violence we come across online is even real.

Daniel Goldhaber’s Faces of Death — a pseudo-remake/reimagining of the 1978 mondo horror film of the same name — serves as an examination of that exact phenomenon.

Faces of Death follows Margot (Barbie Ferreira), a young woman working as a content moderator at TikTok-knockoff Kino, where she discovers a series of peculiar, violent videos from a supposed copycat killer, remaking the famous executions from the original Faces of Death movie with mannequins as the perpetrators and Internet personalities as the victims.

As one may expect (as is often the case in similar films like Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi or Uta Briesewitz’s American Sweatshop), Margot soon falls down a dangerous rabbit hole as she tries to first figure out if the videos are real and then catch the perpetrator.

When the focus isn’t on Margot, the movie follows Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), the copycat killer in question, as he stalks and kidnaps his victims — frightening in his leisurely simplicity — staging their deaths meticulously in the hopes of both recreating a movie that brings him some level of comfort and building a devoted following in the attention economy.

Faces of Death (2026), Independent Film Company & Shudder

When it comes to the morbid thrill of violence à la the 1978 Faces of Death, Charli XCX is no Juliette Gariépy and this is no Red Rooms (one of this decade’s best horror films, in case you missed it), but it’s not really trying to be.

Where Red Rooms wears its morbidity on its sleeve with the off-putting nature of its morally gray protagonist, Faces of Death’s Margot stands as a personification of the film’s moral virtue. She spends the entire runtime staunchly against both snuff and, to a less preachy extent, violent horror films; aside from the murky past drip-fed to the audience as the film moves forward, she’s a paragon of righteousness among her money-hungry Kino coworkers.

Most of the people who consume the explicitly violent content, on the other hand, remain part of a faceless mob that only exists behind a phone screen, making it feel more like a plot device than a reality.

The meta, modern social media horror of Faces of Death stands in a strange middle space between Scream, Saw, and the meaner, bleaker Funny Games; it plays all fields by attempting to make the audience laugh, squirm, and look at themselves with recrimination for their willing participation in such barbaric voyeurism when all is said and done. If it seems antithetical to perform the gory excess of Saw and the preachy, violent anti-violence of Funny Games simultaneously, then, well, that’s because it is.

“Who cares?” One character says when Margot berates them for enjoying and sharing a potential snuff film. “It’s called coping. We’re all going to Hell anyway.”

That character is mostly played for laughs, but it seems hypocritical or flat out wrong to act like this film is in any way a biting satire. Its violence is senseless, sure, but rarely is the audience actually forced to endure its ramifications like in other “extreme” horror (think the twenty minute torture scene in Martyrs, or that awful ten minutes of TV static in Funny Games; if you know you know).

Margot, as a character, cares about the value of death, but the film around her doesn’t seem to feel the same.

Faces of Death (2026), Independent Film Company & Shudder

She barely gets to have a reaction when characters she’s close to are injured or killed. Even the deaths of strangers she witnesses through video seem to make her more anxious than anything else. She spends no time looking into the lives of those she believes kidnapped or dead, both her and the film itself leaving them as nothing other than meat fodder for Arthur’s executions. In fact, Faces of Death oftentimes seems more interested in making fun of them for desiring fame than feeling for them.

Beyond that, the ’80s style, synth-filled score is certainly fun, but it makes the film feel like a nostalgic homage to the slasher horror that came before; sadly, that rose-tinted flashback to the past feels out of place here. The audience is expected to shake their heads and reject the spectacle of death, but next to nothing in the film itself — the score included — cues them to do so. Instead, it plays out with the familiar story and musical beats of a tried-and-true slasher, paradoxically going for gross-out gore over anything else.

As a horror lover, I’m the first to defend a good slasher, and sometimes even a bad one; they succeed for a reason. Final Destination 3 is a comfort movie for me, and gross-out gore can be a lot of fun. In this case, however, it seems like a misplaced if not outright ill-conceived priority for a film so caught up in the condemnation of accessible graphic violence.

In interviews discussing the film, Goldhaber seems to be focused on adapting the death we find online to the big screen. In an interview with Letterboxd, he said:

“When Faces of Death first came out, it was the only venue where you could see images of people dying in this kind of way — even though it wasn’t real. Now, you see images of death on your phone accidentally, while waiting in line for coffee. That was a starting point for us in thinking about where Faces of Death lives today.”

The film revolves around this idea: what can a horror movie do to scare you that you don’t already come across online? Sometimes, though, it seems like the film is using that as a challenge rather than a question.

For instance: at one point in the film, Arthur dismembers and sews up some of the corpses of his victims to look like mannequins. He calls this an “artistic liberty,” something he created on his own rather than copying from the original movie. In that moment, it’s almost like he’s speaking for the filmmakers: “if it’s a remake,” he says, giddy, “you can get away with murder!”

Faces of Death (2026), Independent Film Company & Shudder

It’s moments like that one that make the movie feel at odds with itself. Maybe there is no shame in the thrill of a good slasher, with new gore made up in tribute to the old, but if that’s the case, then there’s no reason for Margot to spend the movie criticizing those around her for how little they care, or, more accurately, no reason to do basically anything she’s doing throughout the film.

If reality — the murder being real rather than fictional — is meant to be what crosses the line, that feels like an almost hypocritical point to make when riffing on the source material of 1978’s Faces of Death, of all things, which was made up at least partly of real archival footage. That’s not to mention that half of the big idea is that it’s hard to tell reality from fiction nowadays.

If it’s the apathy that crosses the line — “who cares, it’s called coping” — then the film should put at least some value on the horrible weight of death.

I would also argue that it’s difficult to address the issue of graphic violence online while, for the most part, remaining apolitical about it. While the film does tease about how important sex ed and other health tidbits get blocked by the algorithm, our attention sucked up by companies who don’t care about us, it entirely avoids politicized violence.

When I think about videos of death that I’ve seen online, I think of Alex Pretti, killed by ICE; the shooting of MAGA podcaster, Charlie Kirk; or, most prominently, videos from Gaza, atrocious acts of violence and the devastation left in its wake.

It is this violence that affects me and many others most, but Faces of Death swerves clear of it entirely by dealing with snuff films in their most literal form: death for entertainment. While not every film needs to deal with the heavy topics of our current reality, the blatant evasion of it has the unintended downside of making Faces of Death feel very removed from reality.

Unlike the faceless mob in this film, I can’t imagine anyone I know ever intentionally watching a staged execution online, whereas I’m certain everyone I know has seen at least one of the videos I listed above. In that regard, the violence in this film reminded me more of the fake snuff films from the CW’s *Riverdale than it did anything I’d plausibly* come across by accident online.

Faces of Death (2026), Independent Film Company & Shudder

Despite the flaws with its messaging, Faces of Death is certainly thrilling from start to finish. The cat-and-mouse game between Margot and Arthur is fascinating (and, at times, deeply frustrating) to watch, as the two repeatedly seem to gain the upper hand over each other. The online nature of the threat makes it feel omniscient, adding an extra layer of tension to each Reddit thread Margot starts or link that she clicks.

In terms of the film’s craft, Barbie Ferreira charms and entertains in all of her projects, and Faces of Death is no exception; there is something deeply grounded and familiar in Margot’s particular brand of loneliness. Ferreira plays her downward spiral so seamlessly it feels like just as much a wake-up call for the audience as for her when another character calls out how deep she’s gotten in this whole situation.

She’s easy to root for — even when Margot’s lack of technical know-how has the potential to be utterly maddening — and adds to the excitement whenever she’s on screen.

Dacre Montgomery’s pivot to character acting has been greatly enjoyable. While the less over-the-top costuming here prevented him from instantly disappearing into the role as he did in Dead Man’s Wire earlier this year (where it took me approximately fifteen minutes to recognize him!), his commitment to his character is definitely in large part why this film still feels fun to watch.

He shrinks when he needs to, be it into his large coats or his smarmy insincerity, but he has the rage and menace to fill the screen when the time comes, even behind a mask.

If nothing else, watching the two of them move around in the wonderful sets used in the film makes it worth the watch. A few that come to mind are Margot and her roommate’s warm, well-loved, and beautifully decorated apartment; Arthur’s large, empty home that may as well be a castle surrounded by a moat with how isolated it feels; and even the cool, clinical cubicles at the Kino office, where everyone is sectioned off from each other with both walls and headphones.

Overall, Faces of Death entertained. It would’ve been easy to take a direct sequel in the same style as those that came before, so I personally will always respect the more creative direction taken here.

While the great production design and performances from Ferreira and Montgomery prevented this from ever feeling boring, a more committed approach to its themes — as opposed to trying to have comedy, graphic violence, and a strict moral message all at once — could’ve gone a long way in elevating it into something more.