Faces of Death Revives the Title, Not the Terror

Faces of Death

★ ★

Faces of Death attempts to ask the same question as the 1978 film that shares its title: Is this real? The original film boasted ‘Banned in 46 Countries’ on its cover. No doubt, that helped propel it to cult classic status. It was also hard to find, likely on purpose.

You wouldn’t find the film at Hollywood Video or Blockbuster. If you found it, it would be at a mom-and-pop video store that also had a curtained-off room in the back. Supposedly, someone at my junior high school had a copy and held a watch party when the parents were away. No one talked about the film afterwards—ever.

Dacre Montgomery as Arthur Spevak
© 2026 Independent Film Company

The hype behind the original relies on the claim that it contained actual footage of people and animals dying in horrific ways. Those claims of authentic death have supposedly been debunked.

In this film, a serial killer (Dacre Montgomery) is abducting viral video stars and staging death scenes from the original film and filming them for views, likes and subscribers. He’s obsessed with the 1970s horror classic and goes to elaborate lengths to replicate the murders in his basement. All cinema serial killers seem to have an elaborate basement of horrors. Our villain here is no different.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works for a popular streaming platform, clearly meant to mimic YouTube, where she decides which uploaded videos are approved, flagged for violence or criminal activity, or simply rejected outright. The rules of her job don’t allow her to research disturbing videos at home. When she happens across a few of our killer’s videos, she begins to suspect the people onscreen might actually be murder victims. So Margot sets off to break the company rules and investigate the origins of the videos on her own.

Charli XCX as Gabby
© 2026 Independent Film Company

Margot has a bit of viral video fame in her past, enough that people who recognize her call her ‘Train Girl.’ Years ago, she was filming streaming content with her sister where they waited until the last minute to jump away from a moving train. That’s why Margot has PTSD.

When Margot gets too close to the killer, she becomes his next project. A clumsy game of cat-and-mouse ensues that follows a horror formula with actions and sequences that are dumb enough to see coming a mile away. Don’t go down into a dark basement without a light, a machine gun and a flamethrower kind of dumb.

The film leaves a lot of wasted opportunity on the table. Montgomery is easily the most interesting character, and he portrays the killer with chilling precision. His character is a madman, and even at his most insane, Montgomery still shows artistic restraint as the film goes off the tracks. He could have been a very memorable character, but the predictable plot killed that long before the credits rolled.

Barbie Ferreira as Margo
© 2026 Independent Film Company

There’s a scene where Margot is trying to bait the killer in a Reddit chat room. He purposefully takes the bait and uses a link in the chat to track Margot. Both Margot and the killer work to outsmart each other at the same time. It was intriguing and promised to jumpstart the story. Unfortunately, it settled right back to the bad horror formula.

But the characters also make really bad decisions. Take our killer, for example. When one of his victims escapes the basement of his suburban home, he pokes a sniper rifle out an upper-story window and fires a few rounds until he drops her. I guess he lives in a neighborhood where no one hears or sees anything in broad daylight. That’s the kind of logic littered throughout the film.

Margo hiding in a house of horrors
© 2026 Independent Film Company

The way Margot is written, it’s hard to believe that her character has the investigative skills to outwit the killer. To Ferreira’s credit, she does what she can with the character, evoking sympathy, but Margot herself is a little too two-dimensional.

It’s frustrating when a film has an interesting premise and all the elements for cinematic magic, only to fall short. Nothing in this film pays off on its own without screenwriting contrivance, where out of nowhere the hero somehow manages to outsmart the villain. The film is the epitome of a T-shirt worn by Grace in Project Hail Mary that said “I had potential.” Unlike Grace, Faces of Death never comes close to living up to its own.