RATING: B-

IFC Films and Shudder present a Legendary Pictures production in association with Divide/Conquer, Angry Films, and BT Productions. Directed by Daniel Goldhaber. Produced by Anda Hendricks, Greg Gilreath, Susan Montford, and Don Murphy. Written by Isa Mazzei and Daniel Goldhaber; based on the movie series by Gorgon Video. Cinematography by Isaac Bauman. Edited by Taylor Levy.

Stars Barbie Ferreira, Dacre Montgomery, Josie Totah, Jermaine Fowler, Aaron Holliday, Kurt Yue, and Charli XCX.

The infamous Gorgon Video series gets a “meta” treatment in this updated re-imagining where it ultimately becomes a middle of the road thing.

Margot Romero is a content moderator for Kino, a social media platform. She has had it rough since the death of her sister in a train accident. After  she is asked to teach the new moderators on how to do things, she begins to go back to work. Coming upon a video of a man being shot and executed, she discovers that the man in the video was one who was deemed missing weeks ago. At first, she is confused as she continues seeing more violent videos, it is dismissed as phony with use of special effects and gore. 

While feeling uncomfortable, Margot returns home where she finds the VHS tape of the film “Faces of Death”. Her roommate Ryan, who owns the tape, explains to her that it had always been believed that the depictions were real, but were proven to be fake just for the sake of the film. However, Margot soon realizes that the recent wave of videos are depictions based on the film and someone is responsible for actually killing the victims in the same manner. Will she be able to put an end to the killer’s madness?

1978’s Faces of Death was an infamous “documentary” depicting what was believed to be real-life death through various conditions. While sixty percent of the footage was real based on archival footage bought from various news sources, the other forty were staged using special effects for the sake of the film. While critics hated the original film, it gained an audience and it led to sequels.Nearly four decades later, we are treated to a “meta” reimagining, where we have a moderator whose lines between fantasy and reality become blurred while we have another character who has an obsession with the original film. 

Barbie Ferreira is good as Margot, a content moderator who is still grieving the death of her sister and is a recovering addict. She seems like the perfect scapegoat to view the videos and decide if they are real or fake. It is when she sees an execution that she sees it as fake at first until she realizes that the man may have been one who was found missing. This leads to a spiral in the world of the blurring reality and fantasy. While we see her falling down the rabbit hole, we are met with the other central character.

Dacre Montgomery has proven to be play both heroes and villains. While some may know him as Jason the Red Ranger in 2017’s Power Rangers reboot, his role as Billy in Stranger Things proved he can play it dirty. Here, he is the latter as Arthur, a crazed man who proceeds to kidnap potential victims, including an influencer and a news reporter, with the intent of killing them and use the original film as a source of influence. Montgomery is pretty good here and while Aaron Holliday has a bit of support as Margot’s roommate Ryan, there were times the film is somewhat dragged and does offer a finale that really does show quite a major twist but seems to end on somewhat a sour note. 

Faces of Death tries hard to bring a “meta” element to things and while it works for the most part, the issues lie more in the two central characters and it is not the fault  of the actors, but it sometimes felt flat despite the good amount of kills and inspiration from the infamous original film. It’s an okay film, but it’t not a great film, but not a bad film either.