‘Faces of Death’ Review: Barbie Ferreira and Dacre Montgomery in a Gratuitous Horror Remake

In the publicity for their movie, the creators of the new Faces of Death make all sorts of claims about how their film explores such things as our growing desensitization to violence, whether or not watching violent imagery makes us complicit, and our seemingly ravenous appetite for real-life carnage. They say that they wanted to “hold a mirror up to the toxic media ecosystem we live inside of.”

It all sounds very impressive and very thoughtful. But they give the game away when they describe the film this way: “It is an exploitation of an iconic exploitation film.”

In case you’ve forgotten or are too young to remember, the original Faces of Death, released in 1978, is a prime example of the so-called “mondo horror” genre (the term emanates from the granddaddy of the form, 1962’s Mondo Cane). The faux documentary featured “pathologist Frances B. Gross” (gotta love the name) regaling viewers with graphic footage of various deaths of the supremely unpleasant variety. Although the majority of the footage was indeed real, a significant portion was composed of varyingly convincing fakes.

Needless to say, the low-budget effort was extremely profitable and went on to become a cult film, garnering legions of fans with its release on VHS. It also spawned numerous direct-to-video sequels and spin-offs, official and otherwise, becoming a veritable cottage industry of morbidity.

Now comes this reboot, no, remake, no, “exploration,” directed by Daniel Goldhaber (Cam, How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-scripted by him and Isa Mazzei. Very much of the moment, the story revolves around Margo (Barbie Ferreria, Euphoria), a content moderator at a YouTube-like video-sharing website named Kino (which probably won’t please the indie film distributor of the same name). Margo, who has a tragic backstory involving her own brush with internet notoriety, spends her days monitoring the often objectionable uploads to the site, having to make instant decisions as to whether or not to keep them up.

Margo’s supervisor (Jermaine Fowler, Coming 2 America) isn’t as concerned as she is about such videos as a man being graphically put to death by electrocution or a dinner party in which the participants eat the brains of a man whose head they’ve just bashed in.

“Give the people what they want!” he advises her.

It’s when Margo recognizes several of the videos as being nearly identical to ones in the original Faces of Death that she begins to suspect that they’re actually real. (One tip-off comes when a commentator posts, “This reminds me of Faces of Death”). She finds a VHS tape of the film in the particularly well-stocked office library and starts making the gruesome comparisons (thus providing the opportunity to feature plenty of clips from the original).

It turns out that the videos are the work of, you guessed it, a serial killer, Arthur (Dacre Montgomery, Stranger Things), shown gleefully pursuing his avocation in a series of ultra-violent scenes. Prone to wearing red contact lenses that make him look demonic and disguising his features with a mask and stocking, he also keeps several people imprisoned in cages in his basement. And when he figures out that Margot is getting wise to his modus operandi, he decides that she needs to be taken care of.

When they eventually meet, not under the best of circumstances, Arthur proves eager to bask in the attention. “Are you a fan of my work?” he inquires. He’s also chatty in that way in which screen villains make clear their movies’ themes.

“It’s the attention economy,” he boasts. “And baby, business is booming!”

He also seems to have watched Scream and its endless sequels too many times, explaining in meta fashion about his perverse methodology: “The algorithm loves remakes…people love remakes. If it’s a remake, you can get away with murder.”

Maybe yes, maybe no. But the filmmakers haven’t gotten away with this remake — sorry, reboot, sorry, “exploration” — that, despite its cinematic inspiration, ultimately feels like just another horror film culminating in a sequence where the plucky young heroine battles with a psycho villain. As such, it’s reasonably effective, with Ferreira appealing in the lead role and Montgomery very creepy as the copycat killer who would have benefited from a more wholesome media diet.

But despite its familiar title, Faces of Death, which also features Charlie XCX in a small role, hardly seems to warrant IFC Films giving it the company’s widest release ever. Of course, as the original proved, you can’t go broke underestimating the public’s taste.