PR in the Philippines

(SeaPRwire) –   Who would have thought to reboot Faces of Death? While it’s technically a horror franchise, with eight installments released between 1978 and 1999, all direct-to-video, the series isn’t known for its characters, lore, or special effects. Faces of Death is essentially a bizarre oddity, an American take on Italian “Mondo” films that blurred the lines between documentary and exploitation cinema in the 1960s and ’70s.

At its core, it’s a compilation of clips, linked by a narrator claiming the footage is real (which it wasn’t, but we’ll address that later). It lacks artistic merit, instead presenting a parade of footage supposedly depicting real deaths from alligators, car crashes, electric chairs, bullets, and a particularly gruesome parachute accident. These are interspersed with interviews with medical examiners and hitmen who deal with death regularly.

You might be thinking, “So what? I can watch strangers die online for free every day.” This very sentiment is the driving force behind this new, fictionalized interpretation of the series. It’s reimagined as a commentary on how constant access to video evidence of humanity’s worst impulses is degrading the fabric of American society. The film’s approach to this theme is predictable: Barbie Ferreira stars as Margot, a young woman working a dead-end job as a content moderator for Kino, a YouTube-like platform. (It’s worth noting this film was shot in 2023, predating other films like American Sweatshop and Red Rooms that explore similar themes.)

Early scenes of Margot at work expose the hypocrisy and insincerity of these platforms’ “community standards.” For instance, she removes an explainer on how to use Narcan, citing it as “promoting drug use,” while retaining a graphic beheading video because, according to her employers, all violence is considered fake until proven otherwise.

Conveniently for her indifferent boss Josh (Jermaine Fowler) — who also chooses to ignore employees getting high and hooking up during breaks as a coping mechanism — proving the authenticity of anything online is incredibly difficult. Nevertheless, for reasons that become apparent throughout the film, Margot feels a moral obligation to investigate a series of videos that appear disturbingly real. She suspects they are snuff films, a suspicion echoed by Reddit commenters who note their striking resemblance to segments from the original Faces of Death.

The discussions about what “Faces” was and how it operated are the most awkward parts of the new Faces of Death. Margot’s horror-fan roommate describes it as “the first viral video before the internet,” which isn’t entirely inaccurate. However, this discomfort is brief, as the screenwriters Daniel Goldhaber (who also directs) and Isa Mazzei fulfill their franchise obligations before returning to their primary objective: creating a modern exploitation horror film that explores how the internet has led a significant portion of the global population to dehumanize others.

This phenomenon is evident in online “NPC” discourse and in the film itself. A character escaping from a villain’s torture den, a nondescript McMansion, runs to a mother and her children walking to their car, pleading for help. She is bloody, out of breath, and clearly in distress. In a normal society, they would offer assistance, but in Faces of Death, they drive away without her. The police are also depicted as ineffective, mirroring their portrayal in real life; authority figures in general are portrayed as lazy and apathetic, as desensitized as Margot’s coworker Gabby (Charli XCX), who laughs at gore videos while vaping.

Aside from Margot, the only character who appears to care about anything in Faces of Death is the villain, Arthur Spevak (Dacre Montgomery). He approaches his gruesome “work” with the dedication and precision of an artist. Montgomery’s performance is a blend of classic serial killer archetypes, seemingly drawing inspiration from Ted Levine in Silence of the Lambs and Tom Noonan in Manhunter, particularly evident when he wears pantyhose on his head in certain scenes. Red contact lenses and a blank, featureless white mask contribute to his unsettling appearance. As Faces of Death intensifies in its final half-hour, Montgomery’s pursuit of Ferreira through his eerily deserted subdivision is appropriately tense and menacing.

For dedicated exploitation film enthusiasts, the most striking aspect of Faces of Death isn’t its bleak, cynical outlook or its re-enactments of what were presented as real murders in the original VHS. It’s the film’s uncanny resemblance to a snuff film, or at least, our collective imagination of what a snuff film would look like if they were real (the debate continues). The use of mannequins, plastic sheeting, duct tape, and harsh floodlights creates an atmosphere of depravity and impending violence. This feeling is amplified by Goldhaber and DP Isaac Bauman’s choice to shoot on grainy 35mm film. Combined with DSLR footage, pixelated digital video, and 16mm clips from the original Faces of Death, the visual style creates a sense of forbidden viewing, effectively generating the unease expected from such a film.

Goldhaber and Mazzei appear less interested in examining their own role in perpetuating a culture of violence through their filmmaking, which is understandable given the existence of films like Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. Their focus is on a pursuit that has long been central to exploitation filmmakers: transforming controversial topics that most people avoid into unsettling, morally ambiguous entertainment. If this movie failed to leave you feeling the need for a shower, it would be a disappointment. Fortunately, the unsettling “ick factor” is very much present.

Faces of Death, from Shudder and Independent Film Company, premieres in theaters on April 10.