The New Faces of Death Is a Remake Done Right, And A Timely, Disturbing Film (Review)

At the time of its release, Faces of Death was one of the last bastions of an art form that is nearly impossible to achieve now, a horror film that presented itself as being fully real and not a cheap Hollywood trick. One could argue that the last time this was even achieved was 1999’s The Blair Witch Project (or maybe 2007’s Paranormal Activity), but John Alan Schwartz’s transgressive mondo went beyond those in terms of its reputation. Marketed as a real-life snuff film and the subject of much discussion about how much of it was even real, Faces of Death became a box office hit and spawned a series, one now so successful that it has reached the true benchmark of a “franchise” by getting a flashy modern revival/legacy-sequel.

It sounds terrible on its…face, but for a boundary-defying film like Faces of Death to get remade, it needs the right person to bring it to life. Enter the filmmaking team of Isa Mazzei and Daniel Goldhaber, who previously achieved the impossible by adapting the non-fiction book How to Blow Up a Pipeline into a perfect thriller. Goldhaber and Mazzei have taken the concept of Faces of Death and not only flipped it on its head, but also used it as a springboard to make a timely horror film that proves both how far society has come since the original and how much nothing has really changed.

Rating: 4 out of 5

PROS	CONS
Incredible performance by Dacre Montgomery	Stretches believability at times
Tense, thrilling sequences
Timely messaging

Faces of Death Puts Other Modern Horror Remakes to Shame

Unlike the original Faces of Death, which has a very loose “documentary” framing around its clips of carnage, the new Faces of Death does have an actual story. In the film, Barbie Ferreira stars as Margot, a content moderator for a TikTok-like video platform, Kino, who spends all day watching snippets of videos that have been posted to determine if they fit the standards and are allowed to be posted. What’s so immediately genius about this idea is that it’s a very real job, one that was impossible to consider when Faces of Death first arrived, but one that does not exist without the influence of Faces of Death on modern media.

Margot’s days are uniquel prescient, as she watches people getting beaten up in the school yard (allowed to be posted), falling off speeding motorcycles (also allowed to be posted), and a woman who offers helpful tips like how to properly put on a condom (using a banana as a prop (this is not allowed because it’s apparnetly sexual in nature)). When she stumbles upon videos of a person who appears to be getting killed while dreary narration plays over it, she shrugs it off and allows it, reasoning it’s almost certainly fake (a hilarious dig at Faces of Death on the whole). Eventually, the original poster of this video has even more to reveal to the world, and it becomes clear they’re recreating iconic moments from the original Faces of Death, but this time, actually killing people.

Though Ferreira’s presence grounds the larger ideas of the movie, as her character is immediately easy to root for, Faces of Death wastes no time in revealing its real killer as it shifts focus to Dacre Montgomery. Perhaps best known for playing an antagonist on Stranger Things, Montgomery is electric in Faces of Death, with a multi-layered performance that harkens to the iconic Tom Noonan in Manhunter. Not only does showing this side of the story give Faces of Death an even bigger tableau to tell its story, but it also offers the filmmakers an opportunity to showcase their more stylish side as Montgomery’s Arthur pursues his victims in high-stakes situations where things don’t always go as he expects.

This is where Faces of Death proves that it has a lot of ideas being thrown into it. Not only is the film a satire of the proliferation of violent content in our everyday lives and the desensitization that has resulted from it, it’s a terrifying horror film with harrowing moments, but it’s also a haunting cat-and-mouse film as Margot tries to track a killer while Arthur stalks his prey (eventually setting his sights on Margot, too). It’s a lot for any movie to tackle in just 90 minutes, and Faces of Death largely pulls it off, managing to terrify the audience and make them feel conflicted about their enjoyment too.

Faces of Death does at times test the limits of the willing suspension of disbelief, though, by sticking so rigidly to being somewhat realistic. A character can run from a house they were just held captive in, sprinting past untold other homes in the area where calls for help are ignored, only to arrive in woods that come from nowhere. The film does address this somewhat by having everyone who interacts with Margot largely treat her like a pariah, which, in turn, makes this slight ding on the film’s construction feel intentional. Not only is Faces of Death in conversation with us, the audience, about its place in the world and its entire reason for existence, but that we can even consider poking holes in its logic is baked into the idea of a film reviving the “Faces of Death” concept.

Filming on the new Faces of Death wrapped back in 2023, and the film has sat on a shelf for years at this point. In the time since then, countless other horror movie remakes have made their way out into the world, some of them attempting to offer commentary on either the world itself or the horror movie genre. It’s telling that waiting in the wings that entire time was a remake that no horror fan would have ever predicted would get made, but also one that has so much more to say about the genre and our enjoyment of it.

Faces of Death premieres in theaters this Friday, April 10, 2026.