Charli XCX to Make Feature Acting Debut in Faces of Death Reboot

The upcoming Faces of Death has added a surprising cast member. On Friday, The Wrap exclusively reported that singer-songwriter Charli XCX has joined Faces of Death in a mystery role. The reboot is currently in production in New Orleans, with Euphoria‘s Barbie Ferreira and Stranger Things‘ Dacre Montgomery leading the cast. Charli previously lent her voice to The Angry Birds Movie and UglyDolls, and appeared in an episode of the Gossip Girl reboot.

The new Faces of Death will be directed by Daniel Goldhaber and written by Isa Mazzei, both of whom previously worked on Netflix’s horror hit CAM. Susan Montford and Don Murphy of Angry Films will produce the film with Divide/Conquer’s Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath. John Burrud, producer on the original Faces of Death, is also attached. The film is set to reimagine John Alan Schwartz notorious 1978 horror film, which flourished at video stores after many assumed that its events were real.

What is the Faces of Death reboot about?

Faces of Death will reportedly revolve around a female moderator of a YouTube-like website, whose job is to weed out offensive and violent content and who herself is recovering from a serious trauma, that stumbles across a group that is recreating the murders from the original film. But in the story primed for the digital age and age of online misinformation, the question faced is are the murders real or fake?

“Faces of Death was one of the first viral video tapes, and we are so lucky to be able to use it as a jumping off point for this exploration of cycles of violence and the way they perpetuate themselves online,” Goldhaber and Mazzei said in a statement when the film was first announced.

The original Faces of Death presented itself to audiences as being an actual documentary showing allegedly real footage of gruesome deaths and mutilations, not only of humans but animals as well. The film developed a cult following but also a reputation about its contents and for being a publicly released “snuff film.” In truth, all of the death and carnage seen in the movie is falsified and simply framed as being true, akin to other movies of the era like Cannibal Holocaust.

What do you think of Charli XCX joining the Faces of Death reboot? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!