Faces Of Death Review: The Infamous Mondo Movie Is Reborn As A Smart Meta Slasher

If you grew up in the golden age of the video store, you were likely aware of "Faces of Death" — especially if you were a horror fan eager to rent the latest "Friday the 13th" sequel. First released in 1978, John Alan Schwartz's infamous mondo movie became the stuff of urban legend; the type of taboo tape that nervous pre-teens would bust out at sleepovers with hopes of not getting caught. Branded as a real snuff film, "Faces of Death" purported to show a series of gruesome deaths. It was the type of movie destined to be censored and banned — and it was, although the box cover art's claims of being "banned in 46 countries" was a bit of marketing hype.

But there was a bit of a twist: "Faces of Death" wasn't real. Well, sort of. While the video was loaded with gory death scenes, almost all of them were staged with actors and make-up effects. However, "Faces of Death" did contain real images of animal deaths in the form or slaughterhouse footage — and it's for this reason I must confess I've never watched it, even though I was very much a horror nerd who grew up in the video store age. I can handle (fake) footage of people dying. But if you're trying to get me to watch real animal deaths, well, I'd rather not.

"Faces of Death" was very much a product of its time. In the '80s and '90s, when the tape and its sequels thrived, the concept of viewing death recorded on film felt freakishly strange and morally forbidden. But times have changed, and all of us are now carrying around phones that broadcast real death and destruction onto our various social media apps without warning. This drastic, and mentally and spiritually draining change of how we consume death is at the center of Daniel Goldhaber's surprisingly effective new "Faces of Death" reboot.

Since the original film doesn't have much of a plot, Goldhaber and co-writer/producer Isa Mazzei (who also worked together on the nerve-wracking white-knuckle thriller "How to Blow Up a Pipeline") had freedom to try something fresh and clever using the "Faces of Death" brand. Their approach is an uber-meta slasher pic about a serial killer literally remaking "Faces of Death" by abducting people, killing them via elaborate re-creations of scenes from the original, filming these deaths and then uploading the footage online.

There's a lot of room for cheap, silly schlock here, but Goldhaber and Mazzei actually attempt to take this (sort of) seriously, which results in a far better movie than you might be expecting. Because of this, the new "Faces of Death" has all the hallmarks of a gory slasher pic while also being uniquely unsettling. It's willing to give us the red stuff, but it wants to make us feel uncomfortable about it. This approach runs out of steam a bit in the final act, but the filmmakers deserve a lot of credit for trying to do something with this property beyond a cheap name-brand cash-in.

"Faces of Death" 2026 introduces us to Margot (Barbie Ferreira,), a frazzled young woman working as a content moderator for Kino, an app that seems to be an unholy blend of TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, and Vine (RIP). Users of the platform upload their own videos all day and night, and it's Margot's job to flag any of them as inappropriate. But what counts as "inappropriate" in this day and age is up for interpretation, and when Margot starts coming across videos that seem to be showing actual murders, she hesitates. But Kino seems perfectly happy to let this stuff get beamed to the masses. "DIY horror is trafficking right now!" her boss (Jermaine Fowler) gleefully proclaims, and her bored coworker Gabby (Charli XCX, in little more than a quick cameo) seems particularly tickled by all the gruesome imagery.

Margot is right to be concerned, of course, because the videos are real. They're the elaborate snuff-art project of Arthur, a serial killer using props (the worst kind of serial killer) to recreate moments from the original "Faces of Death." Played by Dacre Montgomery, Arthur is off-putting and threatening in the vague way that so many creepy real-life weirdos are, and Montgomery works hard to give the character some quirks to elevate him above a traditional horror movie slasher. For one thing, while Arthur's murders result in plenty of gore, he seems literally horrified by blood and performs OCD-like rituals to scrub himself and make sure he remains spotless.

"Faces of Death" cuts back and forth between Margot and Arthur and they're inevitably drawn closer to each other, ramping up the tension and the queasiness along the way. Margot has a tragic viral video moment from her past that makes her an outsider — and results in authorities having a hard time believing her story when she tries to report the unsettling videos ("Faces of Death" makes a point of underscoring that cops can be pretty useless and maddeningly unhelpful). Taking matters into her own hands, Margot becomes an amateur detective, or more accurately, a websleuth — the type of true crime obsessed person who is chronically online, browsing Reddit, and desperately trying to solve a mystery. This has become part of our everyday life, so much so that "Faces of Death" even namedrops the Netflix true crime doc "Don't F**k With Cats," which was about websleuths tracking down a real-life killer based on his own disturbing videos.

The "Faces of Death" filmmakers refuse to shy away from how we, as a society, have become so inundated with images of death and violence. "It's become normalized, but I don't think that we're necessarily not feeling the impact of it. I think we're just used to feeling this constant barrage of violence and anxiety," Mazzei told me during an interview for the film. What was once taboo has become part of our everyday routine, and there's seemingly no way of stopping it. Rather than fight this trend, social media has embraced it and, in true capitalist society fashion, found ways to monetize it. If you can't beat 'em, cash in. 

This all sounds surprisingly heavy for a modern-day "Faces of Death" reboot, and Goldhaber and Mazzei are rather gutsy to attempt something this unpleasant. I'll fully admit I went into this new "Faces of Death" expecting little more than hack and slash, and while there's plenty of blood and guts on display here, the filmmakers go to great lengths to make it all seem appropriately sadistic and nasty. This isn't an '80s slasher throwback where we're having fun watching the fake blood flow. This is something a little more repellent.

There's an antiseptic slickness to all of this, with scene after scene being set in empty, lifeless rooms that feel intentionally ugly and drab. The mundane world these people live in reflects our own, right down to the boring suburban house the killer dwells (and kills) in. It's all underlined by a propulsive, twitchy music score courtesy of Gavin Brivik, who also did the pulse-pounding music for "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" and provides the score for the hit anxiety-inducing series "The Pitt." The end result of all of this is a well-constructed film that leaves you feeling appropriately unclean. Like Arthur, you'll want to scrub the grime off yourself by the time the credits start to roll.

/Film Rating: 7 out of 10

"Faces of Death" opens in theaters on April 10, 2026.