There have already been plenty of creepy movies to hit the 2026 movie calendar, and while some like Undertone terrify with supernatural stories, others play on our fear of real-world evils. The latter is definitely the case for Faces of Death, a meta remake of the 1978 mondo horror flick of the same name. Critics got to screen the upcoming horror movie ahead of its April 10 release, and they’re praising the remake as “brutal” and “deeply unsettling.”
In Faces of Death, Barbie Ferreira plays Margot, the moderator of a social media platform who’s responsible for filtering out violent or offensive content. She happens upon an online group that appears to be re-enacting the murders of the original Faces of Death film and sets out to determine if they’re real or not. David Ehrlich of IndieWire says this remake smartly reinvents the cursed videotape genre for the modern era. He gives the movie a B+, writing:
Here is a smart, fun, and deeply unsettling post-modern slasher that know it can’t manufacture anything scarier than what people scroll past on their phones every day, and leverages that awareness into a multiplex-ready meditation on the terror of living in a world where even the worst atrocities have been flattened into digital wallpaper.
Kimberly Leszak of Fangoria agrees that being bombarded with real violence every day on our phones has rewired the way our brains process sensationalism and says Stranger Things’ Dacre Montgomery delivers as Faces of Death’s digital-age serial killer. Leszak continues:
Barbie Ferreira, Josie Totah, and Dacre Montgomery star in this sadistic meta slasher that will cleanse your palate of any recent stabs at reboots and franchise extensions. It’s brutal, it’s sticky, and if you long to see a team of filmmakers having the most fun with classic practical effects, it’s here for you. … Faces of Death doesn’t skimp on gore, but it manages to avoid the woeful dullness of torture porn.
Chris Evangelista of SlashFilm rates the film 7 out of 10, writing that director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei are gutsy to attempt something this unpleasant. They refuse to shy away from how society has become so inundated with death and violence. The critic says:
There's a lot of room for cheap, silly schlock here, but Goldhaber and Mazzei actually attempt to take this (sort of) seriously, which results in a far better movie than you might be expecting. Because of this, the new Faces of Death has all the hallmarks of a gory slasher pic while also being uniquely unsettling. It's willing to give us the red stuff, but it wants to make us feel uncomfortable about it. This approach runs out of steam a bit in the final act, but the filmmakers deserve a lot of credit for trying to do something with this property beyond a cheap name-brand cash-in.
Katie Rife of Inverse calls the movie an “impressively nasty piece of work,” and says it’s probably a good thing if you feel like you need a shower after watching it. Rife writes:
For the real exploitation aficionados, however, the most striking thing about Faces of Death isn’t its bleak, cynical worldview, or its re-creations of what turned out to be re-creations of real murders on the original Faces of Death VHS. It’s the fact that this movie really does look like a snuff film — or, at least, what we all assume a snuff film would look like, if they actually existed. … It all looks like something you shouldn’t be seeing, producing exactly the uneasy feeling you should have while watching a movie like this one.
Jacob Oller of AV Club gives the movie a C+, writing that the Faces of Death remake isn’t outlandish enough to stand out from the “forbidden footage” bent of the original, not to mention the atrocities filling our feeds every day. Oller says:
Faces Of Death, through its goopy set pieces and its pontificating speeches, simply dresses a good ol’ fashioned psycho up in the ephemera of reconsidered IP. An oddball aping a fake murder movie in reality is sort of amusing, but much of that framing (and the unwieldy thematic baggage it brings with it) just gets in the way of the film’s cat-and-mouse heart. Montgomery … brings enough to his role to fill in the gaps. But Ferreira succumbs to the simplicity, her stock reactions befitting her thinly written role.
Faces of Death is receiving mostly positive reviews from critics, compiling a 68% on Rotten Tomatoes. If this brand of meta-slasher is what you’re craving, you can check out the remake in theaters starting Friday, April 10.
