Faces of Death

The High-Concept Tragedy of the Algorithm.

Feed the algorithm, get that dopamine boost, embarrass yourself to give people what they want—support the trend… But what happens when modern horror movies start with social commentary only to collapse into empty shock?

“Faces of Death” has a clever premise, but as predictable as it sounds, this film inspired (and not a Remake/Reboot!!!) on the 1978 shockumentary “Faces of Death” hits the protocol problem with a high-concept, intellectual opening, only to end up trapped into a final-girl slasher.

Clearly the writers didn’t know how to sustain the social commentary.

Shockumentaries were born in the 1960s with the Italian “Mondo Cane,” an era when the world didn’t have access to the material we have today, but still had the curiosity to find out what was wrong with the world. They worked in a different time, where images still had mystery and power, but mostly relevant the need to know and feel shocked.

Looking at them today feels kinda funny rather than shocking, first because we already know the tricks behind most of them, and second because since the late ‘90s we’ve become used to far worse images flying around websites dedicated to human atrocities.

In our time, the web has expanded this to an out of control next level of un-censorship. Social media, mixed with our obsession with real violence, changed the perception of what we see, creating a spiral that engages audiences in a morbid relationship with the most extreme corners of human deprivation.

Before going into my essay/commentary—because this movie doesn’t really deserve a review—I’m gonna make a little provocative statement…

Yes, we are all horror fans here. Some like ghost stories, some psychological horror, and others look for something even darker—extreme gore. I’m somewhere in between all of them, no shame… I like to see the world in all its colours, and cinema is no exception.

But there is one thing I cannot understand—or better say, stand. It’s ok, we all come across real killing footage at some point, but when this becomes a voyeuristic hunt for dopamine through watching human beings tortured, I start wondering where the limit between curiosity and sadistic satisfaction really is.

Can we still call it horror fandom? Or is it becoming something way more controversial and concerning? Have we really become so numb to violence that we now look at it as the latest form of entertainment?

I’m sure some of you will disagree and might think: “Hey, I’m a good person but I like to watch people dying.”

And there’s a huge difference between watching it in a movie and watching it through the lens of someone committing the crime.

Fictional violence can even work as awareness, making us more conscious of danger and how nobody is truly safe—without necessarily turning into paranoia. But real violence exists in a completely different context, and somehow it stopped being a red flag and almost became a green flag to tolerate certain behaviour.

End of my rage-bait… so let’s start to talk about “Faces of Death.”

It starts with Margot Romero (Barbie Ferreira), better known as the Train Girl (the nickname matters more for the algorithm than you think), who works as a content moderator and comes across disturbing videos she can’t understand if they’re real or not.

What she eventually finds out is that those videos are recreating the infamous mondo-documentary “Faces of Death,” but delivered through a Scooby-Doo plot where a civilian plays detective on Reddit.

But obviously her boss doesn’t care, because the videos feed the algorithm and give people what they want—death—and what all platforms want: people glued to them.

So far the plot seems to go in the right direction, with a vivid and realistic critique of a world feeding itself with cruelty and empty content, almost like a match between sex vs. death.

Because at the end of the day, isn’t that what true crime vs. OnlyFans really are? Different forms of consuming human bodies as content, regardless of context, just to keep feeding platform economies built on addiction and exploitation.

Revealing the killer too soon usually destroys the tension unless the killer is genuinely fascinating. And here the behaviour is so predictable that the mystery—the only thing keeping the plot alive—completely evaporates.

Unfortunately, the movie quickly shifts into a desperate gore-slasher-exploitation experiment and ends up becoming a dumb movie with no soul, turning into the exact same exploitation it could have criticized.

Using the “Faces of Death” name implies a certain level of forbidden or taboo imagery. Turning it into a standard detective vs. killer story makes it feel like they simply used the famous title to sell tickets for a generic script.

A real missed opportunity to say something meaningful about the horror and true crime community, its audience, and its monsters, confusing gore with depth.

At the end it leaves you empty. Ok, some scenes are quite good, and Charli XCX’s presence? Please… two scenes in total with an ok American accent, but seriously stop putting this parsley everywhere just to create hype.

To end on something less bitter, I appreciated Barbie Ferreira and Dacre Montgomery’s performances, as well as some other cast members who brought a certain charm to the movie, alongside an ok cinematography… but all wasted by weak writing.

Modern cinema—especially horror, now that it has become more mainstream than ever—is slowly losing long-term emotional impact and social weight.

And honestly, this is also our responsibility. If we keep feeding the algorithm with junk content, we’ll keep getting soulless movies like this.

“Faces of Death” chose to become a dumb slasher instead of a “Black Mirror”-style exploration of our obsession with death, with no real intention of challenging the audience.

Instead, we just get another masked killer.