Official Trailer
Rating: 5.3/10 | Genre: Horror | Runtime: 97 min
Starring: Barbie Ferreira, Dacre Montgomery, Josie Totah, Aaron Holliday, Jermaine Fowler
Faces of Death tries really hard to be unsettling, and I get what it’s going for. A content moderator stumbles onto videos that recreate death scenes from an old exploitation film, and suddenly she’s caught up in some kind of underground conspiracy. The premise has legs. It’s timely. It’s got that internet horror vibe that actually works when done right.
But this movie doesn’t do it right.
The Good Parts
Barbie Ferreira carries the film as Maya, the moderator who finds these videos. She does solid work here, actually. Her character slowly realizes something is seriously wrong, and Ferreira plays that creeping dread pretty well. There’s a scene about halfway through where she confronts her boss about what she’s found, and the tension in that moment felt real. You believe she’s scared.
The concept of content moderation is a smart backdrop too. It’s a job most of us don’t think about, but it’s real, and it’s disturbing. People actually watch the worst stuff the internet has to offer so the rest of us don’t have to. The movie could have done more with that angle, but I appreciated it being there.
Where It Falls Apart
Here’s the thing though. The movie has no idea what it wants to be. Is it a thriller? A slasher? A comment on internet culture? It keeps switching tones and never settles into anything that actually works.
The pacing is a mess. Nothing happens for like the first forty minutes. Maya finds the videos, she watches them, she talks to her coworkers about them. That’s it. We’re just watching her go about her day while she slowly gets more paranoid. When things finally start moving in the second half, it’s too little too late. The runtime is barely ninety-seven minutes and it still feels bloated.
Dacre Montgomery shows up as a love interest or maybe a suspect? I honestly wasn’t sure what his character’s deal was supposed to be. He’s in the movie just enough to be confusing. Josie Totah and Aaron Holliday are fine as coworkers but they don’t get much to do. The whole supporting cast feels like they’re just there to fill scenes.
The Videos Within the Video
This is where I thought the movie would get weird and interesting. The videos that Maya finds are supposed to be recreations of death scenes from an old snuff film called Faces of Death. But when we actually see these videos, they’re kind of tame. There’s blood, sure, but nothing that makes you understand why people are so obsessed with them or why this is such a big deal. The filmmakers play it safe when they should be making you uncomfortable.
The twist, when it comes, is predictable. I called it about thirty minutes in. Without spoiling it, let’s just say the movie doesn’t trust the audience enough to make the reveal work. It spells everything out.
The Conclusion
Faces of Death has an interesting premise that deserves a better movie. It wants to say something about the internet and violence and how we consume dark content, but it doesn’t know how to get there. The result is a slow burn that doesn’t build to anything satisfying, with characters you don’t care enough about and scares that don’t land.
The 5.3 rating on TMDB feels about right. It’s not terrible, but it’s forgettable. I wanted this to work, and parts of it do, but the whole thing adds up to something pretty underwhelming.
Have you seen it? Did it work better for you than it did for me?
Where to Watch
Rent on: Amazon Video, Apple TV Store, Google Play Movies, YouTube, Fandango At Home, Plex