phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2026

Faces of Death



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2026
Runtime: 1h 37m
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre Tags: Horror
Plot Summary: Margot Romero, a content moderator haunted by a viral tragedy, must track down a sadistic filmmaker who recreates legendary snuff cinema to silence the internet's obsession with her own past trauma.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: A bit of hot mess. A slow start, loaded with plot, a strong, but brief center, followed by a rushed ending. It has some interesting ideas to discuss, but doesn't engage with them well. Everyone is addicted to social media, everyone is deeply cynical, all personal validation is external, and murdering for attention is the logical outcome. I just saved you 90 minutes, right there. There's a better version of this that either leans into just being a flat-out mean and nasty splatterfest, or focuses on the investigative angle, dealing with complex themes. As is, it does both neither of those well.


Outside Reviews:

Brian Tallerico
3 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

As the pair push to an inevitable climax, Goldhaber and Mazzei have a few surprises up their sleeves, including a showdown at Arthur's house that feels like an ending but only opens the door to a bloodier, unforgettable final act. And, without the common moralization and over-explanation that derails so many "Internet Bad" movies of the current horror age, "Faces of Death" reaches its intense endpoint with two people, forever warped by the tech era, facing off. It becomes a heady swirl of themes and ideas: the moderator of the online age fighting back against what this dark time has birthed.


Jacob Oller
Grade: C+ - Faces Of Death is a so-so slasher too wrapped up in its metafiction

Uncertainty is key to why the original Faces Of Death proved so harrowing and so tantalizing for those who sought it out. The possibility of seeing something you shouldn't, of uncharted taboos yet to become commonplace, was always more compelling than the fake brains and newsreel atrocities. And Goldhaber's non-remake is certainly playful around that, making fiction with a remake inside it, where those fake brains are now real. But that conceptual playfulness is where the film stops having fun, and becomes too clear-cut about what it is; there's not a splattery, Lewis level of gory glee in the kills or a despicable seediness in the world of online content moderation. It's a straightforward slasher with a tech-savvy twist, ironically not outlandish enough to stand out from the formerly forbidden footage filling our feeds every single day.