The Faces of Death remake has applied a sort of gleefully macabre tone to its marketing, releasing its first teaser as a faux-viral stunt under a generic YouTube handle and then a slightly more illuminating trailer that hinted at the frame story surrounding its queasy “real” footage of “actual” death scenes. The 1978 original famously positioned itself as a documentary and gained infamy for duping audiences who fell for its shocking claims, but in 2026, people going to the mall to see a horror flick are well aware what they’re seeing is fiction. That’s not necessarily the case for the characters in the movie, however, as the newest Faces of Death trailer clearly lays out.
At last, we get a solid grasp of how exactly Faces of Death is going to go about presenting its “is it real?” dilemma, as we see a content moderator played by Barbie Ferreira growing curious about the disturbing videos that keep popping up on her platform. She’s savvy enough to know that the weird old horror movie Faces of Death is serving as an inspiration for whoever’s making them. And she’s disturbed enough to google, “How to tell if a snuff film is real?”
It’s age-restricted, because of course it is, but you can click through to YouTube from here:
Her boss advises her not to interfere—”Support the trend!”—and we also see Stranger Things‘ Dacre Montgomery playing a guy who seems aggressively willing to do whatever it takes to rack up the most views.
Here’s the official synopsis: “In Faces of Death, the exploration of the original film’s infamous ‘is it real or not?’ conceit continues as a woman (Ferreira) working as a content moderator for a major video platform discovers what appears to be re-enactments of murders from the original film. In an online world where nothing can be trusted, she must determine whether the violence is fiction, or unfolding in real time.”
Moviegoers, at least, can devour their popcorn with a clear conscience. Directed by Daniel Goldhaber and co-written by Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei, Faces of Death also stars Josie Totah, Aaron Holliday, Jermaine Fowler, and Charli XCX. It opens April 10.
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