A content moderator works to track down a serial killer recreating a legendary snuff film in Daniel Holdhaber’s Faces of Death.

The internet offers unrestricted access to material that ranges from the mundane to the grotesque, and the sheer volume of violent or disturbing content raises questions about the psychological cost of encountering it. As people grow accustomed to seeing the worst of human behaviour online, the boundary between curiosity and harm makes extreme content feel routine.

Faces of Death applies its thesis by focusing on the people who sift through the internet’s most disturbing material. Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works as a content moderator for a legally distinct TikTok, reviewing flagged videos and deciding what the public should be shielded from. The job looks routine, but the constant exposure to violent and degrading footage leaves her colleagues drained and detached from the world around them. Margot appears more resilient, though her reliance on medication suggests that the work affects her more than she admits.

Margot becomes fixated on a series of unsettling videos from a single user that she thinks may depict real murders. Her own investigation leads her to a string of disappearances that match the people in the clips, and she realises the killings are recreations of scenes from Faces of Death, a 1978 snuff‑style film that gained notoriety because many viewers believed it was genuine. The original film is real, and this version uses it as inspiration rather than attempting a direct remake, creating an unusual form of legacy sequel. The approach recalls the Scream films, where killers emulate the fictional Stab franchise, though the twist here is that Faces of Death exists outside the story world, giving this film a curious blend of sequel and reboot.

The film makes sure newcomers aren’t left behind, though it sometimes relies on blunt exposition to do it. One scene has Margot’s roommate, Ryan (Aaron Holliday), a cult‑film enthusiast with a rare VHS copy of the original, sitting her down and explaining exactly what Faces of Death is and why it matters. It conveys the information, but the delivery is awkward. Using a real film as the foundation gives this version a sense of authenticity that a fictional creation wouldn’t provide, and the meta‑text that grows from that choice is central to the film’s identity, even if it resonates most strongly with viewers who know the original.

There’s also an implied contrast between the scarcity of the original Faces of Death and the way shocking material circulates today. The 1978 film is treated as a rare artefact, something that built its reputation slowly because access was limited. Modern online content spreads instantly, peaks quickly and disappears just as fast. The suggestion is that the kind of lasting cultural impact the original achieved is far harder to replicate now, simply because the landscape is too crowded for anything to endure.

Another thread running through the film is the gradual dulling of shock. Repeated exposure to violent material numbs the viewer, and that numbness can create a desire for something even more extreme. The act of watching becomes a kind of voyeurism, a search for the next jolt rather than a response to what’s on screen. The film leans into that discomfort by staging its kills with enough craft to make them unsettlingly compelling, drawing the viewer into the same cycle of fascination it depicts.

Margot’s past shapes much of her behaviour. A filming accident years earlier left her known online as “train girl,” a label that reduced her to a moment of tragedy and made her wary of how easily the internet strips people of their humanity. Trying to move beyond that experience, she chose work that lets her feel as though she’s helping to keep the online world cleaner, even if the reality of content moderation means her influence is small. That desire to do something meaningful drives her investigation into the copycat killings, since she’s the only one who recognises the pattern and takes the possibility of real violence seriously. Barbie Ferreira plays her with a mix of methodical focus and rising panic, giving Margot a sympathetic edge as she tries to stop her life from being defined by a single mistake.

Arthur (Dacre Montgomery) is the killer behind the recreated sequences, presenting himself as an unassuming presence who blends easily into the background while hiding a capacity for calculated cruelty. Montgomery sells both sides of Arthur, and once the façade drops, the character becomes genuinely frightening. His manic declaration of why he mimics the original film is unsettling, and his pursuit of Margot once she threatens to expose him has a disturbing intensity.

The film’s structure places Margot and Arthur in clear parallel. She’s trying to move past an internet‑amplified trauma, while he willingly sinks deeper into the same digital darkness she’s trying to escape. Their environments underline that contrast: Arthur’s spotless lair, built for staging violence, sits against Margot’s sterile workspace, both spaces revealing how closely their lives orbit the same online world. As the story unfolds, their paths converge, with Margot unaware that her investigation is drawing her directly toward the person she’s trying to stop.

When Margot and Arthur finally collide, the film becomes a fight for survival that relies on Margot’s ability to think quickly and outmanoeuvre someone who plans every detail. The idea works in theory, but the execution is uneven, leaning on coincidences and moments that undermine Margot’s previously established sharpness. The film is strongest when it builds suspense and lets the gore sit at a distance as a reminder of how depraved the online world can be. It’s less effective when it tries to resolve that tension, and the final stretch falls short of what the buildup promises.

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Verdict

A striking film that uses its unusual sequel/reboot identity to follow how the online world pulls people into different forms of fear and fixation.

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