\u201cFaces of Death\u201d claimed to be a real life snuff video, a collection of documentary footage of executions and accidents, where everyone on camera actually died. It was an underground film, so those claims were rarely refuted. Most people didn\u2019t even know about it. All the rest of us knew is it was \u201cthat\u201d film in the video store, the one people only rented on a dare. A truly cursed object.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Years later, after the internet proliferated and urban legends like the ones above were debunked, \u201cFaces of Death\u201d lost a lot of its luster. Some of the footage was real, but it was documentary footage and newsreels. The most horrifying images were indeed faked for dramatic effect. To learn that \u201cFaces of Death\u201d wasn\u2019t really a snuff film is a relief, but the loss of that rarest of artistic rarities \u2014 the thing we call \u201cmystique\u201d \u2014 was also palpable. What was once an urban legend is now, and always was, just another movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Daniel Goldhaber\u2019s \u201cFaces of Death\u201d is partly about Schwartz\u2019s original film, but it\u2019s also about recreating that morbid mystique. A killer decides to remake \u201cFaces of Death,\u201d but for real this time, restaging the fake scenes with actual murder victims. These clips are so artfully filmed it\u2019s hard to tell if they\u2019re fake, and they soon develop a following on social media. This killer\u2019s edgier remake takes advantage of that same bloodlust with which modern audiences gluttonously devour real-life humiliations, acts of violence and other atrocities online. The forbidden media of the past is, Goldhaber argues, the mainstream media of the 2020s.<\/p>\n\n\n
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The new \u201cFaces of Death\u201d stars Barbie Ferreira as Margot, who works as a content censor for a social media and video app which is, for legal reasons, not TikTok. Margot spends her day watching flagged videos, deciding which ones are suitable for public consumption and which are not. Violence usually stays on the platform. A video where someone explains how to use NARCAN, in the event of an overdose, is flagged and removed. The rampant hypocrisy of real-world platforms that monetize hatred, misery and suffering, while forcing creators to use childish euphemisms for serious, real world topics is on full display. And it\u2019s the stuff of horror movies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Margot has seen these new \u201cFaces of Death\u201d videos, and it takes her a while to make the connection \u2014 her roommate is a cult horror fan, and he conveniently owns a VHS copy \u2014 but she eventually risks her career to track down the murderer. She\u2019s one of the most fascinating modern slasher heroes, driven by regret and shame, heroically compensating for her sins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dacre Montgomery plays the serial killer, Arthur, who thinks of himself as a real filmmaker. But he\u2019s also extremely insecure, writing impassioned defenses of his own films under alternate accounts, all the while agonizing over how many question marks make his posts look desperate. (Three is too many, one isn\u2019t enough; two question is the porridge that Goldilocks ate.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Daniel Goldhaber has been one of the most exciting new filmmakers for so long that it\u2019s probably time to call him one of the best of his generation. His debut \u201cCam\u201d is a frightening supernatural horror film, but also that rare motion picture that takes sex work seriously, giving the entire work a sense of genuine insight and importance. His \u201cHow to Blow Up a Pipeline\u201d is an actual revolutionary work, the kind the heroes from \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d would watch for inspiration, and closer in spirit to \u201cThe Battle of Algiers\u201d than the Oscar-winning film that actually name-checks \u201cThe Battle of Algiers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
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A horror reboot like \u201cFaces of Death\u201d might seem like it\u2019s beneath a filmmaker with this much talent and potential, and to be fair, the film sometimes falls back on tired, obvious clich\u00e9s. The introduction of a knife hidden in a tube of lipstick absolutely must be important later, and the villain absolutely must be atypically foolish for that set-up to pay off the way it does. But it\u2019s still a slasher movie, so on some level Goldhaber is merely following the recipe. What\u2019s important is what he adds to the stew, not what the store brand stock he uses as the base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By making a film about how evil it would be to remake \u201cFaces of Death,\u201d and try to outdo it, Goldhaber recontextualizes the original, transforming it for a new audience, and honoring the morbid curiosity that was, more than anything else, \u201cFaces of Death\u2019s\u201d most significant legacy. He lets his villain make the ill-conceived remake, while staring from afar with an austere, cinematic eye for day-to-day wickedness and an uncanny knack for Grand Guignol. There\u2019s a Kubrickian particularity to cinematographer Isaac Bauman\u2019s camerawork, which captures the villain\u2019s artistic ambitions but never romanticizes them. There\u2019s the movie Goldhaber is making, the movie Arthur is making, and a hero from the real world who\u2019d rather have nothing to do with either, and gets dragged into their plans anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On one hand, Goldhaber\u2019s film is a terrifying, stark, oppressive horror film that outscares the other modern slashers. On the other it\u2019s an intelligent treatise on the grim obsession we have with being obsessively grim. Either way you have to hand it to this new \u201cFaces of Death.\u201d When it\u2019s scary, slashers don\u2019t get much scarier.<\/p>\n\n\n
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