The original Faces of Death is a cult classic, in the UK known as a ‘video nasty’. One of those movies someone had on VHS, and you would watch as a kid when you really shouldn’t.
I was late to the party on the movie, and only saw it in the past few years.
Even today, though, it leaves an impression. That monkey scene seemed pretty real, even to me. However, it was all done with very clever Hollywood magic and word of mouth. Clever, very clever.
Obviously, you cannot remake a movie like this today. Kids at school can go to any website and see real killings and death, and goodness knows what else! I hear you can even see breasts online!
The new Faces of Death isn’t a mockumentary like the first, it’s a story. It stars Barbie Ferreira, Dacre Montgomery, Josie Totah, Aaron Holliday, Jermaine Fowler, and Charli XCX. Putting someone like Charli XCX in it is the same level of desperate as Lizzo in The Mandalorian.
The Story
This new remake of Faces of Death is produced by Shudder, which is a red flag for me. Shudder is the Ed Wood of horror; a lot of passion, but no talent.
The story of this new movie is:
A woman, employed as a website content moderator, comes across a series of violent videos reproducing death scenes from a film.
It wasn’t just going to be clips of people dying online, similar to the original. We start with Margot (Ferreira) watching clips of people dying online. She works at a site where she flags anything that’s too extreme for even the internet.
She sees one video of a beheading, flags it and says it’s probably fake. It’s not fake, and the killer is kidnapping people and killing them. He’s doing this modelled on the main kill in the original Faces of Death.
This is where the connection to the original ends.
The rest of the story is a bog-standard ‘someone is killing people, the main protagonist has to find out who’s doing it’ affair. It’s been done a million times before, in pretty much every horror movie ever.
The Cast
Firstly, I’m going to get myself into trouble for this, but why can’t we have attractive women in movies anymore? Ferreira isn’t ugly, but at the same time, she’s not a young Jamie Lee Curtis, or Neve Campbell, or Barbara Crampton.
She does a perfectly good job in the role of Margot, but that’s about it. I honestly couldn’t care less if she made it to the end or not. Am I being shallow? Yes, I am, but then, the point of movies is to escape from reality. I want to see someone hot escape the killer.
As I said, the inclusion of Charli XCX is just pandering to the modern generation. I’m still not 100% sure who she is, another ‘singer turned actor’ wannabe, I guess. Having said that, credit where credit is due, she plays her part well. At least she was eye candy.
Identity Theft is Not a Joke, Jim
Overall, as I said, this new Faces of Death is another movie, in a long list, of horrors. It’s a standard cat-and-mouse chase to get a killer. If you took away the name of Faces of Death, this would have come out, been watched, and forgotten about in an instant.
The only reason they called it Faces of Death is to ride the coat tails of the original. They shoehorn in this new killer, who is using the same methods as the original movie, and that’s it.
You can put Faces of Death on the title, and all the modern ‘horror fans’ will soak up the ‘memberberries. You know all the fans who think this is peak cinema have never seen the original.
The original movie worked, as it came out in 1978, before the days of online and things going viral. You just heard from a mate’s brother that it had real deaths in it. The dodgy VHS you watched made you squirm and probably gave you nightmares.
This new movie is nothing like that at all; it can’t be, online means you can see whatever you like, real or not. All this new movie does is make a crappy horror and sully the good name of the original.
Overall
Is it a well-made movie? Yes, it’s perfectly competent. I mean, I’ve seen better from indie movies, but I’ve seen worse from Hollywood. It’s completely average on all levels. However, because it’s trying to ride the Faces of Death train, it makes it bad.
It’s the same as the Evil Dead reboots. They are just standard horror movies, but they have Evil Dead written on them.
The original Evil Dead movies are classic for a reason. The first one was scary, but then they leaned into a cheap campiness in the second and third. They are brilliant horror comedies, where the new movies are straight-up horror.
Same name, but different in every way. Again, if you took Evil Dead off the titles, you would just have another run-of-the-mill horror movie. Faces of Death is exactly the same.
There are some bloody stupid decisions in the movie, concerning the plot, but honestly, I can’t be bothered to type them up. It’s a waste of my time and yours, as you don’t need to see this movie.
I’m giving Faces of Death a generous 0.5 star out of 5, purely because the movie-making isn’t terrible, but it loses stars because it’s got Faces of Death written on it. Identity theft isn’t a joke!
Faces of Death is on VoD.
