It isn’t the fault of poor Neal exactly for letting a serial killer (Dacre Montgomery) into his home in “Faces of Death” when a stranger appears with a cut on his hand on his idyllic suburban street where there wouldn’t seem to be much to be suspicious of, but he does open the door willingly after being asked for help. He could be a little more curious upon looking at the size of the wound, and as it happens, he should be aware that there’s a murderer on the loose when he’s had to report on it as a newscaster, but at a time when even the most atrocious reports don’t tend to stick, it’s understandable how he’s let his guard down just enough that when he’s ultimately subject to an unfortunate fate, at least it can seem as if he should shoulder at least some of the blame, a common trait among the “victims” in Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei’s reconsideration of 1978 cult horror of the same name that induces as many chills for what it has to say about contemporary culture as from its unsparing violence.
The notoriety of “Faces of Death” precedes it, both the original and the new version when few are likely to remember much more than the title of the old one besides its shock value, having essentially no story to it, but a string of gruesome kills that blurred the line between reality and fiction in some places, and it seemed odd fodder for a studio remake that’s three-year gap between wrapping production and reaching the screen also inspired plenty of speculation. Yet it becomes clear immediately why Goldhaber and Mazzei were interested in revisiting the material, following up their harrowing thriller “Cam” about a cam girl who quite literally loses her sense of self online, with an inspired take on the future that the first film presaged at least as far as audience’s lurid interest in it when Montgomery’s killer is a copycat who takes inspiration from the elaborately orchestrated deaths in Conan Le Cilaire’s “mockumentary” (as well as some of the outfits) and his crimes could go unnoticed in a society that’s been desensitized to such horrors. After all, while the 1978 film may have developed a following from being passed around covertly on cassette tapes, one just needs to log onto Tiktok to be grossed out for entertainment.
Concerns that Goldhaber and Mazzei may have had to water anything down in post-production are also quickly shot down. (It appears that a sincere thank you is in order to the execs at Legendary that foot the bill for this and Macon Blair’s “The Toxic Avenger,” trusting in the talent of distinctive filmmakers but then having no notion of how to market the films they could be expected to deliver to the broader audience they usually chase, ultimately selling off the final product to a specialty distributor.) The irony is after the most recent “Scream” cleared $200 million worldwide at the box office that the new “Faces of Death” has the post-modern appeal of the early entries into that franchise and features a Sydney Prescott-esque heroine in Margot (Barbie Ferreira), an employee at an online video website with the thankless and unpleasant job of monitoring uploads for obscene content. (Like “Cam,” the film is full of glimpses of all the craziest stuff the filmmakers can imagine online.) Inspired to take the job by the proliferation of a video she appeared in that went viral for all the wrong reasons, she’s increasingly interested in a pattern she starts to notice in some of the most violent videos, connecting it to one particular user, who happens to work for a cell phone company where he too has access who’s behind specific IP addresses.
Montgomery makes a fine villain, but he is just one of many in “Faces of Death” where even Margot isn’t above criticism, being inclined to give a pass to more violent content while she has to flag sticking a condom on a banana as sexually explicit and the queasy feeling you get as she begins to close in on the culprit isn’t necessarily from witnessing some truly gnarly murders, but a certain level of complicity when it’s such compulsory viewing. By the end Goldhaber and Maxie earn their wink to the audience when the killer remarks, “If it’s a remake, they let you get away with murder,” creating a new kind of monster by putting on the mask of an old property without much currency now of its own to draw blood and leaving no survivors, no matter what their vital signs show, just varying levels of humanity some are able to retain in an era when it’s so easy to go numb.
“Faces of Death” will screen next at the Overlook Film Fest in New Orleans on April 9th at 10:15 pm at the Prytania Theatre. It opens across the country on April 10th.