In publicity for their film new creators Faces of death They make all sorts of claims about how their film explores things like our growing insensitivity to violence, whether or not viewing violent images makes us complicit, and our seemingly insatiable appetite for real-life carnage. They say they wanted to “hold up a mirror to the toxic media ecosystem we live in.”
This all sounds very impressive and thoughtful. But they give the game away when they describe the film this way: “It’s an exploitation of an iconic exploitation film.”
Faces of death
Bottom line Not nearly as thoughtful as he thinks.
release date: Friday, April 10
He slanders: Barbie Ferreira, Dacre Montgomery, Josie Tota, Aaron Holiday, Jermaine Fowler, Charli
exit:Daniel Goldhaber
Screenwriters: Daniel Goldhaber, Issa Mazi
Rated R, 1 hour 38 minutes
In case you forgot or are too young to remember, the original Faces of deathreleased in 1978, is a prime example of the so-called “Mondo horror” genre (the term stems from the form’s grandfather, 1962). Mondo Kane). The fake documentary showed “pathologist Frances P. Gross” (gotta love the name) regaling viewers with graphic footage of various deaths of the very unpleasant variety. Although the majority of the footage was actually real, a significant portion of it consisted of varyingly convincing fake clips.
Needless to say, the low-budget effort was extremely profitable and became a popular film, amassing legions of fans with its release on VHS. It has also spawned numerous direct-to-video sequels and spin-offs, both official and unofficial, becoming a veritable cottage industry of the genre.
Now comes this reboot, no, remake of, no, “Exploration,” directed by Daniel Goldhaber (Cam, how To blow up a pipeline) and co-written by him and Issa Mazi. Most of the time, the story revolves around Margo (Barbie Ferreria, trance), a content moderator at a YouTube-like video-sharing website called Kino (which probably wouldn’t please the indie film distributor of the same name). Margo, who has a tragic backstory involving her own brush with online notoriety, spends her days monitoring often unwanted uploads to the site, and is forced to make on-the-spot decisions about whether or not to continue with them.
Margo’s supervisor (Jermaine Fowler, Coming 2 America) is not as concerned as she is by videos such as a man’s graphic execution by electrocution or a dinner party in which participants eat the brains of a man whose head they have just bashed in.
“Give the people what they want!” He advises her.
This happens when Margo recognizes several video clips as being almost identical to the original ones Faces of death She’s starting to doubt that it’s actually real. (One piece of advice comes when a commenter posts: “This reminds me of Faces of death“. I found a VHS tape of the film in my well-stocked office library and began making outrageous comparisons (providing the opportunity to view a lot of clips from the original film).
It turns out that the videos are the work of serial killer Arthur (Dacre Montgomery, Strange things), appears happily pursuing his hobby in a series of extremely violent scenes. He tends to wear red contact lenses that make him appear demonic, hides his features with a mask and stockings, and also keeps several people locked in cages in his basement. When he discovered that Margot had become wise to the way he worked, he decided that she needed to be taken care of.
When they finally met, not under the best of circumstances, Arthur proved eager to enjoy the attention. “Are you a fan of my work?” inquires. He’s also talkative in the way that on-screen villains illustrate the themes of their films.
“It’s the attention economy,” he boasts. “And baby, business is booming!”
And apparently he watched too Screaming And its endless sequences many times over, meta-explaining his skewed methodology: “The algorithm loves to reproduce…the people Remakes love. If this was a remake, you could get away with murder.
Maybe yes, maybe no. But the filmmakers haven’t spared this remake — sorry, reboot, sorry, “exploration” — which, despite its cinematic inspiration, ultimately feels like just another horror film that culminates in a sequence where the plucky young heroine battles a psychopathic villain. As such, it’s reasonably effective, with Ferrera’s charisma in the lead role and Montgomery’s extremely creepy as the copycat killer who would have benefited from a more wholesome media diet.
But despite its familiar title, Faces of deathwhich also features Charlie XCX in a small role, doesn’t seem to guarantee that IFC Films will give it the company’s widest release ever. Of course, as the original script proved, you can’t go bankrupt by underestimating audience taste.
