‘Faces of Death’ Remake Review: A Clickbait Horror Provocation That Forgets to Be Scary
‘Faces of Death’ (2026) Review: Barbie Ferreira in a Horror Remake That Clicks, But Barely Cuts
Daniel Goldhaber’s 2026 remake of Faces of Death, led by Barbie Ferreira and Dacre Montgomery, attempts to transform a once-notorious VHS shock reel into a meta-horror about internet outrage, viral violence, and the blurred line between spectacle and suffering. It’s clever in concept, visually sharp, and undeniably timely, yet the film rarely lands the emotional or thematic blows it keeps promising.
Where the 1978 cult oddity became an underground legend by posing staged carnage as real, this new Faces of Death tries to interrogate why we click, share, and rewatch digital brutality. The result, as The Hollywood Reporter’s review notes, is a movie far more interested in the illusion of transgression than in delivering truly unsettling horror.
From VHS Urban Legend to Algorithm Anxiety: What Is Faces of Death?
The original Faces of Death (1978) was a pseudo-documentary that became the stuff of slumber-party dares and video-store whispers. Marketed as “banned in 46 countries,” it mixed newsreel footage with crudely staged death scenes, daring you to figure out what was authentic and what was disturbingly fake. Its infamy mattered more than its actual content; the movie was a myth engine.
Goldhaber, best known for the fiercely political eco-thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline, approaches the material with a distinctly 2020s sensibility. Instead of gory travelogue, we get a story about creators chasing clout and viewers chasing the next shocking clip. This Faces of Death slots neatly into a lineage of media-horror: think Videodrome, The Ring, and Cam (which Goldhaber also directed).
“In the publicity for their movie, the creators of the new Faces of Death make all sorts of claims about how their film explores such things as our growing desensitization to violence, whether or not images of death should be captured at all and if so, who owns those images.”
It’s a smart framing on paper. Instead of asking “Is this death real?” the remake wants to ask, “Why are you still watching?”
Plot & Setup: Turning Shock Footage Into a Creator Horror Story
Without diving into explicit content, the film centers on a young woman (played by Barbie Ferreira) drawn into an underground ecosystem of viral death videos and fringe creators who traffic in extremity. Dacre Montgomery plays one of the key figures orbiting this world, a presence that mixes charisma with menace.
Structurally, Faces of Death behaves like a hybrid of traditional horror-mystery and internet thriller. Ferreira’s character follows a breadcrumb trail of clips and coded messages; each step pulls her deeper into a community that blurs documentary and performance art. The more she looks, the more she—and we—have to confront why we keep seeking out disturbing material in the first place.
Goldhaber layers in forum threads, glitchy livestreams, and screen-within-screen sequences that feel very native to TikTok and Reddit culture. The digital language is fluent, and that authenticity keeps the film from feeling like a “how do you do, fellow kids?” meme. It understands how people actually encounter disturbing content online: accidentally at first, then compulsively.
Themes: Desensitization, Ownership, and the Economy of Outrage
The marketing leans hard on the idea that this Faces of Death is less a gorefest than a thesis on media ethics. The filmmakers have spoken about three major questions:
- Desensitization: Does constant exposure to violent imagery numb us, or can it trigger genuine empathy and activism?
- Ethics of recording: When is it acceptable—or necessary—to film death and harm, and when does it become exploitative?
- Ownership: Who “owns” traumatic imagery: the subject, the person who films it, the platform, or the anonymous mass of people who repost it?
The new film “wants to be a commentary on why we keep watching, sharing and monetizing footage of real-life horror, even as we insist that we’re above it all.”
In isolated scenes, those questions land. There are moments that mirror real-world debates around protest footage, bystander video, and true-crime TikTok. You can feel the film tapping into the same unease that surrounds police bodycam uploads and livestreamed tragedies.
But as the Hollywood Reporter review points out, the follow-through is patchy. For every sharp idea, there’s a turn toward familiar genre beats that blunts the impact. The movie gestures at systemic critique—platforms, algorithms, monetization—but it often retreats into a more individual, “these people are extreme” framing, which ironically lets the broader culture off the hook.
Performances & Direction: Strong Leads in a Tonally Uneven Sandbox
Barbie Ferreira, coming off Euphoria and indie work, brings a grounded intensity to a role that could have easily tipped into self-parody. She plays curiosity, dread, and a kind of bitter resignation with a lived-in quality that suggests she’s seen her share of online darkness long before the plot begins.
Dacre Montgomery leans into his already-established ability to project both charm and threat (see: Stranger Things). His presence gives the film some welcome unpredictability; when he’s on screen, you’re never quite sure whether you’re watching a collaborator, a manipulator, or a victim of the system himself.
Goldhaber’s direction is stylish and confident. He’s clearly interested in the infrastructure of horror—how content is edited, distributed, and monetized. Sequences that move between browser tabs, encrypted chats, and in-person encounters have a propulsive, investigative energy.
The problem, as the Hollywood Reporter review suggests, is tonal. The film lurches between chilly, idea-driven analysis and moments that feel like they’re chasing the transgressive vibe of the original. That push-pull can leave viewers unsure of how seriously to take any individual image. Is this meant to unsettle, indict, or just provoke?
Visual Style, Sound, and World-Building: Slick, Streamable Horror
On a craft level, Faces of Death largely delivers. The cinematography favors cold neons, shadowy interiors, and the clammy blue of laptop light. It’s recognizably the world of 2 a.m. doomscrolling, where the only illumination is your feed.
The sound design, too, wisely avoids wall-to-wall jump scares. Instead, it uses notification pings, buffering glitches, and the hollow ambience of empty interiors to create a persistent low-grade anxiety. When the score rises, it tends to echo the synthy dread of other modern techno-thrillers rather than old-school slasher music.
Where the craft sometimes undercuts the message is in how polished everything looks. For a film trying to critique the commodification of violent imagery, Faces of Death is, ironically, very brand-friendly: sleek compositions, beautiful people in artfully ugly spaces. That tension—the gap between the ugliness it describes and the beauty of how it’s shot—makes the moral positioning feel a bit slippery.
How Does It Stack Up to the 1978 Cult Classic?
Comparing the two Faces of Death films is almost an apples-to-algorithms situation. The 1978 movie was about taboo-breaking in an era when you had to hunt for bootlegs. Its transgression was rooted in physical scarcity: that one tape behind the counter everyone whispered about.
In 2026, shocking imagery is a tap away. The remake’s smartest choice is to accept that it can’t outdo the original’s myth-making, so it tries instead to interrogate the culture that rendered the original obsolete. As an idea, “what happens when the forbidden becomes mundane?” is rich.
Where the remake falters, as The Hollywood Reporter argues, is in committing to that interrogation. The original’s fakery raised questions about authenticity; the new film raises questions about complicity—then often sidesteps them with genre jolts. You feel the film slightly scared of becoming the thing it’s critiquing, and that skittishness shows.
Strengths and Weaknesses: A Horror Remake Caught Between Provocation and Caution
Taken as a whole, Faces of Death is a fascinating near-miss—engaging in the moment, but less resonant than its subject matter demands.
What works
- Timely premise: Reframing a shockumentary as a story about viral media and content ethics is genuinely inspired.
- Committed performances: Ferreira and Montgomery ground the more heightened material with believable, contemporary anxieties.
- Visual and sonic fluency: The film feels attuned to the way we actually navigate screens and feeds in 2026.
What doesn’t
- Thematic follow-through: Big questions are raised, but often parked in favor of standard horror escalation.
- Tonal drift: The film vacillates between critique and participation in what it’s critiquing, dulling its edge.
- Emotional distance: For all its talk of death and suffering, there’s surprisingly little that lingers on a gut or heart level.
Verdict: A Thoughtful, Frustrating Update That Never Fully Confronts Its Own Gaze
As a piece of horror entertainment, the 2026 Faces of Death is serviceable: tense in stretches, anchored by solid performances, and attuned to how unnerving the digital everyday can be. As a response to its infamous namesake and to our current media landscape, it’s more intriguing in theory than in execution.
The Hollywood Reporter review ultimately characterizes the film as somewhat “gratuitous” in its use of horror trappings—eager to borrow the original’s aura of danger without fully earning it. That feels fair. Goldhaber and his collaborators clearly have things to say about how we watch and share violence, but the film stops short of the ruthlessness—toward itself and its audience—that might have made it genuinely essential.
Still, as part of a broader trend of horror and thrillers grappling with online spectacle, Faces of Death is an interesting cultural artifact. It may not blow up the conversation around media ethics, but it does leave one lingering, quietly damning question: in a world where everything can be recorded, who gets to decide what we can’t look away from?
3/5 – Thought-provoking in flashes, but ultimately a cautious remix of a once-infamous title.
For more perspectives and production details, see the film’s page on IMDb and the full review at The Hollywood Reporter.
