Film

A Meta-Sequel That Needs More Bite

5 April 2026

There’s nothing like a good doom-scroll. Sometimes it can take the form of endless recipe videos, TikTok slop you would never make in the comfort of your own home. It could be a Wiki-hole that brings you to the page of a disease eradicated in the 14th century. We all do it – our phones are practically designed for it, taking our hand and leading us down into the depths of the internet.

Margot’s (Barbie Ferreira) job is, basically, to doom-scroll. She works at Kino, a TikTok-like social platform, as a content moderator, flagging potentially problematic videos for removal or otherwise letting them stay on the site. NDAs are signed, there are rules against watching or discussing videos outside the office, and a red light attached to desks can be turned on when a particularly vile video appears. Most of the time, though, Margot is approving violent clips for the platform while flagging educational videos for removal. When she does decide to flag a gruesome clip, afraid it might be real, her friend and boss tells her, “DIY horror is trafficking right now, support the trend.”

This is how Margot comes to discover Faces of Death, a 1978 film that was marketed as being banned in 48 countries and the namesake of this new meta-sequel. The original Faces of Death is framed as a documentary following a pathologist named Francis B. Gröss, who walks audiences through various graphic clips showing different ways people and animals can die. Its shock factor at the time centered on whether the clips were real, which brings us to Margot, who wrestles with the idea that the videos she’s seeing may show real people dying, too.

Directed by Daniel Goldhaber, whose first features include Cam and the brilliant thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Faces of Death touches on the horror of its source material, but eschews transgression for a stab at the sort of meta ethos more at home in a Wes Craven film. It’s a concept that, when taken to its logical conclusion, ultimately feels as hollow as the mannequins that kill one of Arthur’s (Dacre Montgomery) victims.

Faces Of Death Is Too Much Like A Scream Movie For Its Own Good

Faces of Death is at its best when Margot is at Kino, mingling with her jaded coworkers who are all-too-unaffected by what they consume for money on a daily basis. It’s a clever re-framing of the “crazy protagonist” trope, whereby Margot’s sanity is constantly being undermined by the apathy of those around her. When she asks one of her coworkers, played by Charli xcx, why she works at Kino’s moderation center, she simply replies, “It’s a thrill when you get a good one. Plus, they have dental.”

This indifference would drive anyone crazy, but the world has a funny way of ignoring everyday horrors. The sheer numbness required to face this kind of content on a daily basis isn’t a far cry from what many already do, and if they aren’t directly consuming violent material, there is an air of deadening the senses with 15-second clips of over-emotive dance routines or front-facing monologues. Margot knows the dangers of social media – her backstory has shades of cliché, but it’s still effective in pushing her down the rabbit hole that her coworkers’ superficiality precludes them from exploring.

It lacks the nastiness of its namesake, but is anchored by solid performances from its two lead stars…

That investigation involves a string of missing persons and a killer obsessed with the dark corners of the internet. The biggest issue with Faces of Death, though, is that it’s just not all that dark down there. As critics, we’re supposed to judge a film for what it is, not what it’s purported to be by the marketing around it. It can be hard to do that when something is boldly declared “the scariest movie you’ll ever hear,” as A24 attached to Undertone, an otherwise solid film that can’t possibly live up to the hype surrounding it; or when Hamnet was said to be “the greatest movie of all time“ in the midst of its awards campaign.

Faces of Death was marketed similarly, with trailers said to be banned from YouTube and movie theaters allegedly refusing to display the film’s posters because they were too graphic. Nothing in the movie really warrants this level of caution. Instead, what it delivers is a well-directed horror thriller with too much on its mind. It lacks the nastiness of its namesake, but is anchored by solid performances from its two lead stars, Ferreira and Montgomery, the latter of whom is absolutely chewing up every scene he’s in as the vindictive and obsessive serial killer hoping for internet infamy.

There’s a sharp strain of bitter humor laced throughout Faces of Death, giving the film a punchiness that the kills otherwise lack. When a Reddit user comments, “This looks like a student film,” on one of the killer’s videos, Montgomery’s character goes to another account to defend himself before finishing his comment with, “Maybe you’re next.” This peek into the killer’s life provides some of Faces of Death‘s best moments, but it also saps the film of any mystery. We know who the killer is. We know who is investigating him. Margot and Arthur’s inevitable clash is all we’re waiting for.

That confrontation is as bloody and messy as the film itself. Arthur’s motive would be right at home in a Scream movie, which makes the central thrust of the film feel less like a riff on its source material and more like a product of a horror lineage that has been filtered through one too many social media feeds. Faces of Death is trying to do too much and, through that, becomes as shallow as it accuses social media of being.

Faces of Death releases in theaters on April 10.