‹ Back

(Reviews) FACES OF DEATH Is The Best Wes Craven-less Scream Movie

 

By Michael Fairbanks 

    Very few meta movies have much to say beyond constant reminders that you are watching a movie. Virtually all of them sink beneath the shadow of Wes Craven’s iconic Scream franchise which channeled its skewering of media consumption circa 1996 - 2009 into killers that were genuinely creepy. The absence of novelty and thoughtful commentary is felt in the Scream films made after his passing. Those entries have a lot to say about movies but very little to say about people. Enter Daniel Goldhaber’s FACES OF DEATH, a reboot and deconstruction of a video nasty franchise mostly known to elder fans of cult horror. Those films were montages showing various simulated death scenarios that were so realistically produced that many thought they were looking at authentic footage. Goldhaber’s film does not at all attempt to mimic that structure. It is a conventional and mainstream narrative that uses the original material as context for its incisive modern themes. 

 

    We follow Margot (Barbie Ferreira). She’s a content moderator for the short form video app Kino. From 9-5 she’s forced to review and remove twisted footage that sickos thought would be able to slip through the cracks. The company has a “do not get involved” ethos that requires employees to not investigate any unsavory content further than deleting it. This becomes difficult for Margot when a series of mysterious, artistically crafted execution videos start crossing her desk. She cannot be certain but it very much seems like she’s looking at real execution footage. As it turns out, she is! Serial killer Arthur (Dacre Montgomery) is a film student from hell, kidnapping locals and staging their murders in snuff segments reminiscent of the original Faces of Death. Margot eventually defies Kino’s orders and starts to investigate, beginning a game of cat and mouse that can only end in bloody fireworks. 

    Goldhaber’s approach to this story is character driven and bleakly comic in the way all of the best Y2K era horror flicks are. Margot may be irresponsible but Barbie Ferreira makes her entirely empathetic and winning. Her need to solve this is heavily tied to her own past. She is a social pariah outside of the Kino offices because a video of her and her deceased sister performing a train track stunt gone horribly wrong has become mega viral. It’s impossible not to care for someone with so little to lose who has still maintained her soul. On the flipside, Dacre Montgomery has a blast acting completely psychotic. It’s not the most original performance, I sensed him thinking “how could I sound more like Heath Ledger here?” a couple of times. However, projecting that onto an irritating film bro who gets upset when comments don’t like the lighting of his videos is eerie. He may be scary but he’s also deeply pathetic and Montgomery rides that line perfectly. Certainly his best performance to date. The only turn that disappoints is Charli XCX’s painfully annoying cameo as one of Margot’s mean girl co-workers. Her “I don’t give a fuck about anything” punk persona feels like she’s playing a character in high school and the overwhelming fakeness is only bolstered by her awful American accent. 

 

    Goldhaber hits his stride most potently during FACES OF DEATH’s more investigative first half. It is paced perfectly and the contrast between the draining and detached office culture of Kino and her more nurturing home life with her horror buff roommate Ryan (Aaron Holiday, also very charismatic) is beautifully realized. In fact, it is so entertaining in this mode that it only starts to falter a little once it becomes a more standard horror picture.  Ferreira and Montgomery’s face off is certainly satisfying enough but strangely it is rarely as brutal as one might expect. It’s suspenseful, but oddly tempered until the cathartic conclusion. Perhaps Goldhaber felt that his violence should not be as explicit as the original to allow his social commentary to land but it’s the slight miscalculation in his otherwise perfectly realized film.  

    We are certainly living in a golden age of horror right now but I find that the vast majority of them either lean all the way into niche sleaze or are hyper polished with prestige ambitions. There aren’t enough thrillers that play to a general audience with a script worth their time. We need horror films that’ll turn excitable teenagers into die hard fans and I suspect that FACES OF DEATH will go on to have that type of legacy. Goldhaber’s film may not live up to the franchise’s sadistic origins but it offers it a chance at rebirth that could perhaps go on to eclipse its original form entirely.