I’ve always loved gore effects, but I never had a taste for the real thing. I avoid videos of real-life violence and I don’t read true crime. I never clicked on beheadings or traffic fatality clips.
Despite my distaste for reality gore, I was exposed to some of it during the wild tape trading days of the nineties. There was a very loose organization of freaks who mailed each other all manner of video weirdness. Stuff you couldn’t rent and, for the most part, was not legally available. Banned music videos, punk-inspired short films, censored footage cut from movie releases…the sky wasn’t the limit. It was the starting gate.
So, naturally, some real violence was included on the comp tapes I received. The infamous suicide of Pennsylvania State Treasurer Bud Dwyer, committed on live broadcast television, was a popular selection. Morbid curiosity got the better of me and I sat through the whole thing. The camera lingered on the draining corpse well after the self-inflicted shot took his life.
I remember one occasion where I thought I might have been seeing a real torture/snuff movie. It was made with Asian people. I stopped the tape as fast as I could. I figured out that the footage was likely from a Guinea Pig movie. I haven’t seen any of those movies. Unlike Charlie Sheen, I didn’t inform the FBI about witnessing a snuff movie.
I did, however, watch Faces of Death. It was unavoidable. In fact, I think a bunch of us rented Faces of Death on the very first night we had access to a VCR.
It was a kind of rite of passage. You had to see Faces of Death. It’s actually not a bad movie to watch with a bunch of drunk and stoned guys. You can talk during it and not miss a thing.
It was fairly obvious that some of the FoD footage was phony, but other bits certainly seemed genuine. We had fun arguing about it.
There were sequels and a couple of knock-offs. One, Traces of Death, reputedly has all, or nearly all, bonafide death scenes. I never saw any of them.
Incorporatating Faces of Death into a new movie is an inspired idea. Faces of Death 2026 isn’t a remake, a sequel, or a requel. It may be a legacy movie. I’m not sure of all the logistics behind all of the classifications.
I’m trying to see most of the bigger new horror movies, especially when I can get to a theater to watch them. I missed Faces of Death, and I may have let it go, but the movie was distributed by IFC (Independent Film Company). I’ll check out anything from them and I am rarely disappointed.
The tape trading days are over. Now we have apps that stream homemade videos across the world. Thai brilliant technology has given us a breed of largely talentless content creators who are made rich by braindead voyeurs. Well, some of them are rich. Most linger in obscurity just like independent horror writers like me.
Did you ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes of TikTok? Or Facebook reels or You Tube videos? Faces of Death is a glimpse at the process. I have no idea if its an accurate depiction or not, but it seems plausible.
Margo is a young woman who works at a streaming video platform called Kino. She filters out objectionable clips of violence, assault, medical advice, etc. Or, she clicks and sets vids free into the cybervoid.
After seeing some suspicious death scenes videos, Margo becomes curious, then disturbed. She isn’t supposed to discuss or investigate the things she sees. Increasingly terrified, Margo does indeed look deeper into the background of the videos, which seem to be copycat setups from Faces of Death.
Faces of Death ‘26 is a disturbing look into our society’s decreased sensitivity toward violent news and entertainment. The lines between reality and fabrication grow ever thinner, while the powers-that-be are only concerned with profit and reputation.
I liked the movie a lot. It’s compelling as a mysteriously frightening online video. It’s really just a slasher movie set amid the bizarre world of video content. It’s not only smart and scary; the movie is a sobering reflection of the current internet climate.
Barbie Ferreira is excellent as Margo, and it’s nice to see a lead who doesn’t look model perfect. It’s also refreshing to have a completely likeable and sympathetic main character in a horror movie.
I can’t put Face of Death up there with Zach Cregger or Ti West, but I liked it a lot more than most of the middling horror movies I’ve seen in the last couple of years. As much as I liked Obsession, I think Faces of Death is the better movie.
Written by Mark Sieber
Despite my distaste for reality gore, I was exposed to some of it during the wild tape trading days of the nineties. There was a very loose organization of freaks who mailed each other all manner of video weirdness. Stuff you couldn’t rent and, for the most part, was not legally available. Banned music videos, punk-inspired short films, censored footage cut from movie releases…the sky wasn’t the limit. It was the starting gate.
So, naturally, some real violence was included on the comp tapes I received. The infamous suicide of Pennsylvania State Treasurer Bud Dwyer, committed on live broadcast television, was a popular selection. Morbid curiosity got the better of me and I sat through the whole thing. The camera lingered on the draining corpse well after the self-inflicted shot took his life.
I remember one occasion where I thought I might have been seeing a real torture/snuff movie. It was made with Asian people. I stopped the tape as fast as I could. I figured out that the footage was likely from a Guinea Pig movie. I haven’t seen any of those movies. Unlike Charlie Sheen, I didn’t inform the FBI about witnessing a snuff movie.I did, however, watch Faces of Death. It was unavoidable. In fact, I think a bunch of us rented Faces of Death on the very first night we had access to a VCR.
It was a kind of rite of passage. You had to see Faces of Death. It’s actually not a bad movie to watch with a bunch of drunk and stoned guys. You can talk during it and not miss a thing.
It was fairly obvious that some of the FoD footage was phony, but other bits certainly seemed genuine. We had fun arguing about it.
There were sequels and a couple of knock-offs. One, Traces of Death, reputedly has all, or nearly all, bonafide death scenes. I never saw any of them.
Incorporatating Faces of Death into a new movie is an inspired idea. Faces of Death 2026 isn’t a remake, a sequel, or a requel. It may be a legacy movie. I’m not sure of all the logistics behind all of the classifications.
I’m trying to see most of the bigger new horror movies, especially when I can get to a theater to watch them. I missed Faces of Death, and I may have let it go, but the movie was distributed by IFC (Independent Film Company). I’ll check out anything from them and I am rarely disappointed.
The tape trading days are over. Now we have apps that stream homemade videos across the world. Thai brilliant technology has given us a breed of largely talentless content creators who are made rich by braindead voyeurs. Well, some of them are rich. Most linger in obscurity just like independent horror writers like me.
Did you ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes of TikTok? Or Facebook reels or You Tube videos? Faces of Death is a glimpse at the process. I have no idea if its an accurate depiction or not, but it seems plausible.
Margo is a young woman who works at a streaming video platform called Kino. She filters out objectionable clips of violence, assault, medical advice, etc. Or, she clicks and sets vids free into the cybervoid.
After seeing some suspicious death scenes videos, Margo becomes curious, then disturbed. She isn’t supposed to discuss or investigate the things she sees. Increasingly terrified, Margo does indeed look deeper into the background of the videos, which seem to be copycat setups from Faces of Death.
Faces of Death ‘26 is a disturbing look into our society’s decreased sensitivity toward violent news and entertainment. The lines between reality and fabrication grow ever thinner, while the powers-that-be are only concerned with profit and reputation.
I liked the movie a lot. It’s compelling as a mysteriously frightening online video. It’s really just a slasher movie set amid the bizarre world of video content. It’s not only smart and scary; the movie is a sobering reflection of the current internet climate.
Barbie Ferreira is excellent as Margo, and it’s nice to see a lead who doesn’t look model perfect. It’s also refreshing to have a completely likeable and sympathetic main character in a horror movie.
I can’t put Face of Death up there with Zach Cregger or Ti West, but I liked it a lot more than most of the middling horror movies I’ve seen in the last couple of years. As much as I liked Obsession, I think Faces of Death is the better movie.
Written by Mark Sieber
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