Long before The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity gave us found footage flicks that gave the impression of “real” horror, the wave of psycho serial killers in the 1970s (thanks Charles Manson!) gave rise to an even more extreme genre experience. It wasn’t enough for horror fans to watch slashers on the big screen, they wanted the feeling of watching actual horrors taking place. And that led to 1978’s mondo horror Faces of Death, presented as a documentary that claimed to show real murders of people and the killings of animals. True, there was some actual footage of death in the film, but overall it was mostly fake, the brutality dressed up in grindhouse style to appear genuine. The film was a huge hit for the time, but gained new life on VHS and in bootleg, which is where me and my friends watched it and pondered whether it was real. For a long time, I had no clue.
There’s a new Faces of Death on the murder scene, directed and co-written by Daniel Goldhaber whose impressive How to Blow Up a Pipeline (review here) was a superb, gritty call-to-action. In a way, this new movie is, too, but in a completely different kind of way. Yes, there are intense moments of gruesome decapitations, dismemberments, and more, but the film is about our media consumption and the toxic ramifications of the violent content we seek out online. Not only does it fuel conspiracy theories, but inevitably invites others to do increasingly horrific things for the admiration that comes with going viral.
Shot three years ago and having endured numerous delays, Faces of Death arguably arrives at the perfect time, as genre fans are again seeking out more radical films that push the envelope. Euphoria breakout Barbie Ferreira plays Margot, who works at a YouTube-esque video content site called Kino. A content manager, her gig is to sort through the videos and reject or deny them based on the violent imagery, the sexual content, etc. It’s an odd job for Margot, who herself has a twisted Internet celebrity herself. Years ago, she became a viral sensation when her sister was killed by a train in a stunt gone wrong. Margot has been a shut-in ever since, refusing to hang out with friends or go out because someone always recognizes her.
Hidden away from the world in her office cubicle, Margot becomes fixated on a series of videos showing heinous, ritualized murders. A man gets electrocuted, his eyes taped down so they don’t pop out, and the blood pouring out of his ears to show that he’s actually dead. In another, a man’s head is trapped in a table hole and then beaten with hammers. The skin is then peeled off, the skull cracked, and the brain revealed so that it can feasted on by foodies. Margot can’t tell if these videos are real or even if she should approve them for the site. Her boss (played by Jermaine Fowler, still terrible) doesn’t really care. “Feed the algorithm” is his mantra. If the people want it, give it to them. When Margot hears about the original Faces of Death from her roommate Ryan (Aaron Holliday), she discovers that these killings appear to be by a copycat, and they might actually be real.
Of course, the murders are real, although it might make for an interesting movie if that were more of a question mark. That said, we know they’re real because Stranger Things actor Dacre Montgomery plays Arthur, a serial killer whose thing is creating snuff films in which he tortures and kills low-level celebs. He kidnaps Samantha (Josie Totah), one of those annoying influencers who dances in public places, by appealing to her own vanity. Arthur also snatches a local Florida news anchor (Kurt Yue) and cages them until it’s time to make them headliners of his own murderous online content, which has a huge following of deranged sickos. Arthur doesn’t seem like much, but this guy is a twisted freak who delights in the grisly acts he commits. He knows his audience, too, at one point ranting about how much everyone loves him, including gun manufacturers and the government itself, for the fear he helps spread.
So Margot and Arthur are on a collision course, one that can only lead to the kind of bloodshed that Arthur wanted to begin with. He’s like a demented circus ringleader, hooking audiences with murder rather than circus animals. No matter how things play out, Arthur is the winner because he’s giving his fans what they demand. Faces of Death, much like its predecessor, is about tapping into something so illicit, so outlawed, that it shocks us to the core. It’s like a drug user taking that first hit, and from then on it’s about trying to match that high by going into further extremes. Where the film ultimately falters is in the final act, which takes on a more conventional horror tenor as Arthur becomes just another familiar villain with idiotic tendencies. So while this new Faces of Death may not achieve the same level of cult status, it has just as much on its mind about how fucked up we are as a society. That might be the scariest thing of all.
Faces of Death hits theaters on April 10th from IFC and Shudder.
