In the 1970s, as horror movies became more intense, it wasn't just the amount of blood or the level of violence that grew. People also started feeling like they were seeing something real—something more than just movie violence. It was a real kind of horror, like the fear of life itself. Hitchcock's "Psycho" in 1960 was one of the first movies that really brought that kind of horror to life. But the event that really started this change was the Manson murders. They shocked people so much that they started to think of them as a movie of nightmares made real. The slasher films of the 70s, like "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," were inspired by this. They tried to look like real events and used a documentary style to show the violence.
Over time, people got used to this kind of extreme horror.
They started craving even more blood and more intense scenes. They wanted horror that felt real, not just something staged. So in 1978, a film called "Faces of Death" came out to satisfy that need. It pretended to be a documentary and showed scenes of people and animals being tortured and killed. But in reality, most of the scenes were fake. The real murders they showed were just staged for movies. Still, the film was very popular and made a lot of money. It became a big part of the VHS era. It was ahead of its time, showing how people wanted to see forbidden things, which the internet now fulfills every day.
The new version of "Faces of Death" feels like it could have come out of the 70s grindhouse movies.
But it's not a remake or a fake documentary. It's more of a clever slasher movie that also has a message. It's directed and written by Daniel Goldhaber, and it talks about the original "Faces of Death." The movie follows a killer who is copying and posting the same murders from the original film online. He's using the internet to spread his violence and is saying, "Admit it—you want to see this." And considering what people look for online today, he might be right.
The main character, Margot, played by Barbie Ferreira, is a shy young person who works as a content moderator for a platform called Kino.
Her job is to tell the difference between real and fake videos, and to flag what's too extreme. Margot is known because she was in a video where her sister was killed. This made her famous in a bad way. She now hides in her office, watching videos that look real but might be fake. Her roommate, Ryan, who loves horror, helps her find the original "Faces of Death." Through this, she starts to realize that the violent videos she’s seen are copies of the ones in that film.
We know the new murders are real because we’ve been watching the quiet actions of the killer, Arthur (played by Dacre Montgomery). He kidnaps low-level celebrities — like a rude influencer (Josie Totah) and a local news anchor (Kurt Yue) — and puts them in cages in the basement of his fake fancy suburban house in Florida. They wait there until they’re used in one of his viral snuff films. Arthur has a baby-like face that looks noble, and he’s good at pretending to be different people: a nerdy guy, or a good neighbor who gets into trouble. When he kidnaps someone, he wears a white mask that looks scary. When he kills, he wears a stocking mask. But he really shines when he talks about the video industry that makes forbidden content. He says the Internet likes him, that gun makers like him because people want to protect their homes, and that the government likes him because more fear means more control. As the movie says, he’s giving people what they want.
The idea that someone like Arthur isn’t just a killer — but part of the modern attention economy where anything goes — is a bold idea, even if it feels a bit simple.
That’s part of what gives *Faces of Death* the feeling of a classic grindhouse movie, which often had smart ideas too. *Faces of Death* is bold trash, with a strong sense of its own over-the-top themes. It’s the only movie I’ve seen with a folder of “Censored Posters” in its publicity materials, for that edgy marketing effect. The idea of staring at death on screen wasn’t new in the 1970s — it started with old movies like *Frankenstein* and *The Mummy*. But *Faces of Death* taps into a modern kind of creepy watching — the idea of death as entertainment. That’s really what the 1978 *Faces of Death* was about — our desire to see something so forbidden that it feels almost magical. We call it horror, but maybe that word doesn’t fit. What we’re really looking for is something more like awe.
