Studio:   Legendary Pictures
Director: Daniel Goldhaber
Writer:   Isa Mazzei, Daniel Goldhaber
Producer: Don Murphy, Susan Montford, Greg Gilreath, Adam Hendricks
Stars:    Barbie Ferreira, Dacre Montgomery, Josie Totah, Aaron Holliday, Kurt Yue, Jermaine Fowler, Charli XCX

Review Score:

Summary:

An online content moderator desperate to escape viral video infamy crosses paths with a serial killer obsessed with recreating scenes from a notorious horror movie.

Synopsis:

Working as a content moderator for Kino, a popular app for sharing short videos, Margot Romero notices a peculiar video depicting a beheading, but she ultimately flags it as probably fake. Margot goes home to her roommate and best friend Josh, who gifts Margot with a small knife disguised inside lipstick. Josh also convinces Margot to join him at a party to break out of her long-term depression and social anxiety. However, when two women recognize her as “Train Girl,” a nickname she earned from a dangerous dance video that accidentally killed her sister Sophia on train tracks, Margot immediately returns to her loft.

Back at work, Margot is disturbed by a video of an electric chair death that appears realistic. Noting similarities in style to the beheading video she saw previously, Margot brings her concerns to her supervisor Josh, but he tells her to ignore her suspicions because DIY horror is trending.

Elsewhere, secret serial killer Arthur Spevak uses his database access as a manager at a Signaler Wireless cellular store to stalk social media personality Samantha Gravinsky. Wearing a white mask and red contact lenses, Arthur tracks Samantha to a gym locker room where he violently abducts her.

With her ongoing uneasiness growing after flagging a third unsettling video, Margot again consults Josh regarding what she should do. Josh, who gave Margot her job out of sympathy after the emotionally devastating incident with her sister, reminds Margot that her NDA forbids discussing work outside of the office as he questions if she is mentally fit for her duties.

Unable to sleep due to her increasing anxiety, Margot ignores Kino company policy and posts the disturbing videos to Reddit with a request for corroboration on their veracity. Several commenters confirm the videos appear real, with one person pointing out to Margot’s horror that the man in the electrocution video resembles missing filmmaker Justin Podd.

Meanwhile, Arthur pulls off a plan to infiltrate the home of local newscaster Neal Meyer. Arthur ultimately abducts both Neal and Neal’s teenage son Drew.

In addition to becoming upset with coworkers who laugh over the disturbing videos, further research leads Margot to the 1978 cult film “Faces of Death,” which she finds in her roommate Ryan’s VHS collection. Margot watches the movie and realizes the clips that have been bothering her are recreations of scenes from the film. Unsure what to do for fear of losing her job, Margot tells Ryan she thinks a psychopath may be copying the movie and posting his homemade footage online.

Back at Kino, Margot distracts security guard Ed and her supervisor Josh in order to use Josh’s computer to examine the metadata on the videos and determine where they came from. Margot successfully downloads the controversial files and sneaks a small hard drive out of the building.

In a secret basement hidden in his Florida home, Arthur force feeds pizza to Samantha, who is held captive in a small cage alongside Neal and his son Drew. Arthur then kills Neal for a video recreating a death by firing squad. As part of his plan to spread his anonymous internet infamy, Arthur also responds to an online comment criticizing one of his videos.

After bringing the hard drive home, Margot uploads raw footage to Reddit to solicit feedback regarding whether or not the murder clips are real. Seeing her post, Arthur sends Margot a direct message with a tip connecting Samantha’s disappearance to the case. Arthur also uses the email to track Margot’s IP address and subsequently identify her. Freaked out by the implications because she was using his laptop, Ryan abruptly ends Margot’s armchair investigation session.

Margot takes her discoveries linking two disappearances to a possible “Faces of Death” copycat to Detective Lee at the police station. Recognizing Margot as “Train Girl,” Detective Lee casually dismisses Margot’s concern as a delusional suspicion.

Margot returns to work to discover her keycard has been disabled. Having found stimulants she left behind in his office, Josh informs Margot she has been terminated for violating Kino’s drug policy. Margot again tries to warn Josh about the videos Kino is allowing to be posted, but Josh attributes Margot’s obsessive behavior to substance abuse.

After seeing Neal’s execution video, Margot makes a desperate Reddit post claiming her former employer is complicit in promoting twisted clips of a serial killer recreating “Faces of Death” scenes. Speaking with Ryan, Margot reflects that, ever since her sister’s gruesome death, Margot has wanted to help others navigate problematic online content because viewers only interested in disposable entertainment forget real people are being exploited.

Disguised by his mask and contacts, Arthur infiltrates Margot and Ryan’s building. Arthur violently dismembers Ryan, and he later livestreams a video of himself using muriatic acid to melt the body parts. Margot ends up kidnapped and imprisoned alongside Samantha and Drew. As news of his possible crimes spreads, Arthur becomes exhilarated by his growing notoriety and the mystery behind the unconfirmed murders.

In Arthur’s hidden basement, Margot uses the knife concealed in her lipstick to break out of her restraints. Margot manages to free Samantha from her cage, but she is unable to do the same for Drew. Samantha flees outside the house while Margot stays behind to collect evidence off of Arthur’s computer.

Arthur stops Samantha’s escape by shooting her with a sniper rifle. Upon fleeing the house, Margot tries to help Samantha, but Arthur shoots at her too. Margot gets away, but she is distressed to discover one of Arthur’s bullets destroyed the incriminating hard drive she stole. Arthur recaptures Samantha.

After pleading for help from a frightened mother who speeds away with her children, Margot gets assistance from two police officers. Having identified Arthur from an ID badge she also stole, Margot leads the officers back to Arthur’s house after recounting the harrowing events that happened there. Anticipating Margot’s move, Arthur calls 911 separately to frame Margot as a mentally unstable trespasser.

With Margot waiting behind them, the two officers question Arthur at his front door. By calling her a stalker and blaming her for her sister’s death, Arthur triggers a physical outburst from Margot that prompts the two officers to take her into custody. Arthur returns inside without further incident.

Margot recovers in a hospital where a nurse gives her Narcan for being a perceived drug abuser. Arthur texts Margot a threatening message demanding the return of his hard drive or else he will kill Samantha and Drew. Margot returns to Arthur’s house via a cab whose driver recognizes her as “Train Girl.”

Holding her at gunpoint, Arthur guides Margot back inside his home. Arthur hails himself as a hero to advertisers and gun companies who monetize online attention as he confesses that he emulated “Faces of Death” because algorithms prioritize remakes.

Arthur escorts Margot to a kill room where she is shocked to see Samantha and Drew’s decapitated heads atop mannequins Arthur uses in his videos. Arthur forces Margot to inject herself with a sedative, but the Narcan she took earlier makes her recover quickly. Using her lipstick knife, Margot engages in a bloody, violent struggle with Ryan that finally ends when she thrusts a large spike through his chest.

Margot reveals she secretly recorded Arthur’s confession via a button camera hidden in her shirt. As Arthur bleeds out on the floor, Margot successfully uploads the confession to Kino using Arthur’s computer. People immediately begin commenting.

Review:

A character in the 2026 incarnation of “Faces of Death” recounts the phenomenon somewhat similarly, but especially to underage horror fans of a certain generation, the original “Faces of Death” from 1978 will be remembered forever as an underground video Holy Grail whose mythic status eclipsed the actual movie. At the height of the VHS rental boom, grade-school playgrounds and high-school homerooms were hotbeds for whispers about this “documentary” rumored to include authentic footage of executions, macabre deaths, and real dead bodies. The “Banned in 46 Countries!” banner screaming beneath a skull on the box cover was a lip-licking dare to shock your senses with taboo terror. You’d never be able to find the supposed snuff film at a big chain store like Blockbuster. This required a secret quest through the curtains of small mom-and-pop shops sandwiched between a travel agent and a strip-mall barber. Actually finding it would result in you being hailed as a hero bigger than Indiana Jones. Actually watching it earned you instant stardom from awestruck friends desperate to know every detail. While the Satanic Panic was turning heavy metal albums and fright films into dangerous weapons feared by your mother, “Faces of Death” became a nuclear bomb capable of instantly causing her a heart attack if she ever caught you holding the tape in your hands.

When the search finally succeeded, real reactions were far less likely to be mortified horror and much more likely to be mild amusement, not at the gruesome footage, but at the goofy recreations like vacationing diners bopping the head of a monkey to eat its cauliflower brains. Nevertheless, “Faces of Death” remained a juggernaut of epic proportions, spawning several sequels and an unrivaled legacy as perhaps the most controversial movie of all time. Not to be all “kids today” about it, but it’s hard to picture anything like that ever happening again in an online era where practically every piece of media ever made can be accessed one way or another with as little effort as a single internet search.

Co-written by Isa Mazzei and directed by Daniel Goldhaber, who previously collaborated on another thriller for the social media age, the underseen yet enthralling “Cam” (review here), 2026’s “Faces of Death” is neither a sequel nor a remake. More of a meta-movie, the plot concerns a “Faces of Death”-inspired serial killer, Arthur, who recreates scenes from the notorious 1978 film using real victims. The clips he subsequently posts to a popular video-sharing app gain traction as viewers wonder whether they’re fake or not. One person in particular, Margot, becomes increasingly concerned that the videos are real. She’s in a unique position to do something about it, but since no one will take her suspicions seriously, she begins her own armchair investigation into who is behind these apparent crimes.

Unlike a lot of like-minded setups, “Faces of Death” 2026 spotlights Margot much more than the murderer. Although Arthur’s abductions and acts of violence are depicted in select scenes, the movie favors the procedural parts that parallel Margot’s personal arc over salaciously sensationalizing what’s going on in Arthur’s hidden basement.

Margot works as a content moderator at Kino, “Faces of Death’s” fictional proxy for TikTok, Instagram, etc., which is how Arthur’s videos end up in her eyeballs in the first place. It’s a job she got as a favor from a friend sympathetic to her situation. A short time ago, Margot was on the other end of a viral video when a dangerous dance on railroad tracks ended with her sister’s accidental death and Margot earning the nickname “Train Girl” for her involvement in their stupid stunt gone horribly wrong. Ever since, Margot has struggled with intense depression and crippling anxiety because she can’t go out in public without someone pointing and laughing.

Barbie Ferreira scratches more than Margot’s surface in the role. At first, Margot comes across as a little pushy, arguably too ordinary, and not immediately engaging. As her past unfolds through interactions with people like her roommate Ryan, Ferreira shows Margot’s softer side as someone desperate to fight through addictive obsessions to do what’s right even though it’d be easier to keep sticking her head in the sand. Before long, Margot develops into a compassionate hero willing to risk her own physical and emotional wellbeing to help strangers in danger, mainly in her sister’s memory.

Margot’s emergence as the movie’s main throughline has the downside of reducing Dacre Montgomery to a pretty typical madman as Arthur. Montgomery never really explores any space outside that box. Arthur is quiet, has no friends, and works a normal job at a cellular store. To conduct his kills, he ups his eeriness by wearing red contact lenses under a plain white mask, then taunts and torments using aggrandizing monologues breathed through stone-faced stares and sinister smiles. He checks basic boxes for being evil, yet his fascination with rebooting “Faces of Death” for real isn’t a compelling enough hook to make him a standout cinematic psycho.

Just like 1978’s “Faces of Death” doubles as a time capsule of the peculiar period that spawned it, 2026’s “Faces of Death” uses its themes, dialogue, and characterizations to capture modern society’s desensitized dependence upon duck-lip selfies, popular trends, and the humiliating exploitation of vulnerable people to create casual entertainment. The film is very much tied to how the benign rise of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” opened doors to chase easy infamy by creating disposable content, most of which merely ends up on Chive TV or FailArmy as background noise in a bar.

The line between those who walk away from “Faces of Death” with something reflective to mull over and those who see the movie as a simple serial killer thriller gets drawn at those criticisms bubbling beneath the bloodshed. “Faces of Death” gets the job done as a suspenseful murder mystery, but it’s harder to quantify how successful it is as sly satire or pointed commentary. It might be up to time to tell. In true “Faces of Death” fashion, this could be a case where it takes a few years for culture to catch up and find the truth behind the movie’s motivations. Until reevaluation comes due, creepy streaks keep the film’s head above water as straightforward horror regardless if the underlying context is real or fake.

Review Score: 75