Faces of Death (2026) is directed by Daniel Goldhaber and the cast includes Barbie Ferreira, Dacre Montgomery, Josie Totah, Aaron Holliday, Jermaine Fowler, and Charli XCX.
TL;DR: A dark update of the infamous Faces of Death idea that swaps VHS-era shock for modern social media violence and attention culture - worth watching if you can handle the subject matter, less for scares, more for what it says about the internet we all live in.
The Old Legend That Still Hangs Around
There’s always been something weird about the way Faces of Death lives in conversation more than in actual viewing experience, as even now, it feels like an urban myth that got pressed onto VHS, where people used to talk about it like it was some underground secret you weren’t supposed to know too much about, which is probably why it stuck around for so long.
Back then, you didn’t just casually rent it like any other horror tape, as it had this awkward “don’t ask too many questions” placement in small video shops, usually shoved somewhere you had to almost commit socially to reach, and that alone did half the job - half fear, half embarrassment, all curiosity.
So now this new version showed up, it already had a strange job ahead of it, because it can’t really recreate that old shock factor, as nothing really can anymore - we live in a world where people accidentally scroll past worse things before breakfast.
But Daniel Goldhaber doesn’t try to turn this new version into a nostalgia trap, he just drags the whole idea into the present and basically says, “Alright, what does this become when the internet is doing the heavy lifting?”
And the answer is, it becomes content, constant content, and the kind that shows up whether you want it or not, where the killer here isn’t some shadowy boogeyman hiding in the dark, he's more like someone who has fully absorbed online life and decided to treat real people like uploads.
He films, stages, curates, and essentially builds death like it’s a viral project, and there’s something irritatingly familiar about that logic, because it’s not far removed from how attention already works online, just without the obvious crimes, hopefully.
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Margot and Arthur
The main character, Margot Romero, works as a content moderator for a company that basically acts as a filter for the worst parts of the internet - she sits in an office watching endless user uploads, deciding what gets flagged and what stays up.
The film puts her in a cubicle environment that feels almost unnecessary on purpose, like the company insists on physical presence just to make the suffering more structured, where she’s surrounded by coworkers who are all doing the same thing, reacting in slightly different ways to the same endless stream of human nonsense.
What got me though is how normal it all looks on the surface, as it’s all just desks, screens, coffee, casual conversations, before you then remember what they’re actually watching all day and it suddenly feels like the most cursed office job imaginable.
There’s also this quiet joke running through it, that companies like this pretend they are shaping safety or responsibility, when really they’re just trying to avoid legal problems while letting everything else rot in place.
The internet is the real villain here, not just the killer, and the film doesn’t pretend the internet is neutral - it leans into the uncomfortable truth that violence gets rewarded with attention, and attention is basically currency.
Then there’s Arthur, who sits on the other end of this system and fully embraces it, as he’s not just killing people, he’s producing them, where he finds people through their online presence, targets them, and turns their lives into staged recreations meant to be watched.
He wears a mask most of the time, which is almost too on the nose, but still works because it matches how detached his whole approach feels, as nothing about him is chaotic, and that’s the worst part - it’s all structured, patient, almost professional.
There’s a moment where it becomes clear he understands online attention better than most of the people actually posting for it. That idea sticks around longer than anything else he does.
The Final Clash
When Margot and Arthur finally start circling each other more directly, the film shifts into something more tense, but not in a traditional horror way, as it’s not about surprise or twists, it’s about inevitability, where everything feels like it’s been building toward two people who understand the same system in completely different ways finally running into each other.
The online chase between them is probably the most unsettling part, because it feels like something that could almost happen with enough wrong decisions stacked together, and by the time it turns physical, it feels like a confirmation of what the film has been saying the entire time.
It’s not preaching either, as it doesn’t pretend it’s above the world it’s showing, it just sits in it and points out how normal some of this already feels.
Final Thoughts
While there are moments where it edges close to being a bit too neat in how it connects everything, like it’s trying to underline its own point a little too clearly, overall Faces of Death was pretty much as good as I was hoping it would be.
And while it isn't trying to shock you as much this time, it does show you how little shock there actually is left in us anyway - and that’s probably the most unsettling part of the whole thing.