Review: Faces of Death (2026)

[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]

When I was growing up, the original Faces of Death was the most infamous film that nobody in my peer group had actually seen. It existed only as a whispered rumor that circulated around the school cafeteria: a movie that featured 100% genuine gore—authentic executions, suicides, Satanic rituals, car accidents, animal attacks, and autopsies. There was always an older kid that claimed to have acquired a bootleg copy from a sketchy Blockbuster manager in another town. He was full of shit, of course (yeah, I said it, Trevor); nevertheless, the mystique surrounding the forbidden tape persisted, haunting my young imagination (already tormented by the iconic monsters that adorned the cover art in the horror section, such as Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Clint Howard).

Needless to say, the digital age has greatly diminished the “shockumentary’s” reputation—and not just because dedicated sleuths have meticulously catalogued all the fabricated footage, mercilessly eviscerating the rather unconvincing special effects. No, the true culprit is accessibility. Even on the surface web, real—and I mean really real—violence is merely a click away: it’s perfectly possible to witness a war crime from the comfort of your couch or enjoy a side order of police brutality with your breakfast cereal; your laptop screen is a window to a near infinite supply of human cruelty. Thus, the internet has thoroughly desensitized society to bloodshed, essentially reducing the “mondo” genre as a whole to an antiquated relic of the VHS era.

The 2026 version of Faces of Death—less a traditional remake than a metatextual commentary on its progenitor’s controversial legacy (for one thing, it completely abandons any pretense of “nonfictional” framing)—works best when it directly confronts this broader cultural context. Its protagonist is a content moderator for an app akin to TikTok or Instagram. When she begins to suspect that a sadistic serial killer (who, as we eventually learn, resembles Jared Leto cosplaying as Patrick Bateman) is flooding the platform with elaborately staged snuff videos, both her employers and the cops dismiss her concerns as evidence of psychosis, due to her history of mental illness and substance abuse. Undeterred by the apathy of her fellow man, she resolves to bring the murderer to justice herself; unfortunately, she quickly discovers that the tech savvy maniac is a more formidable foe than she initially anticipated…

Structurally, it’s a fairly typical slasher flick (with all the narrative and stylistic baggage that label implies), albeit elevated by its postmodern deconstruction of the “attention economy,” the “micro-celebrity” phenomenon, and the consumerist ecosystem of social media. I’ll admit that the satire here isn’t exactly subtle… but Christ, what the hell is nowadays? Turn on the news, scroll through Twitter, listen to your “political” podcast of choice; the faces of death are everywhere, pervasive and omnipresent.