Barbie Ferreira and Dacre Montgomery resurrect the 1978 horror classic ‘Faces of Death’ to delve into the raw side of social media and deliver a powerful message about digital dehumanization.
“We see videos of people dying all the time, whether it’s on the news, on Instagram or on X. It’s something that’s completely normalized, and ‘Faces of Death’ is no longer a shocking idea, it’s just the reality we live in,” says the actress known for ‘Euphoria’ in an interview with EFE.
Ferreira introduces Margot, a content moderator with a keen sense of justice and a deep wound, linked to a viral video that led to a family tragedy from which she finds it impossible to heal, to the big screen this Friday.
“As the film progresses, he realizes that he’s actually working for the enemy in a major way. And that to me was an interesting perspective, playing someone who believes in the goodness of humans, maybe because of his trauma, and is trying to fight for it,” he explains.
At the other extreme, Montgomery constructs, from pathology and observation of social violence, the figure of a serial killer for which he based himself on “characters in American society who have recently committed atrocities, such as shootings, or prominent figures such as politicians,” he told EFE.
“Unfortunately, there’s a lot of real-life stuff I was able to study to get into this character,” adds the ‘Stranger Things’ actor.
Faces of Death’, the new film by Barbie Ferreira
Beyond visual impact, the new version of the film plunges the viewer into metaphysical doubt when Margot discovers an account that seems to recreate in minute detail the crimes of the 1978 film, a mockumentary directed by John Alan Schwartz and framed in the mondo subgenre.
Under the current paradigm of misinformation and digital montages, the narrative asks whether the executions of the videos that go viral are real or a sophisticated staging.
The ambiguity this film plays with serves to portray the state of today’s culture through horror, “the only genre that can have really complex socio-political conversations and mask them under this kind of disguise, like shock and awe,” Montgomery maintains.
‘Faces of Death’ also functions as a testament to the evolution, not only of cinematic horror narratives, but of the internet user’s own view of death.
“What was shocking in the late 1970s is no longer shocking in 2026. A 5-year-old has inadvertently seen crazier things on his iPad than an adult has intentionally seen on a blockbuster,” Ferreira charges.
With the irruption of new Artificial Intelligence tools, “we hardly realize how much we consume because it has become so normalized (…) It’s as if we were bombarded with images, violence and all kinds of things that are harmful to the brain,” he adds.
Difficult to see and to record
In the almost 50 years that have passed from one film to the next, “the relationship with death has changed enormously,” co-writer and producer of the project, Isa Mazzei, told EFE.
“When the original came out, (death) was something you had to look for if you wanted to see it, you didn’t have as much access. Now, we open our phone, we open social media and we see death everywhere, even when we’re not looking for it,” he adds.
This overexposure was one of the keys they wanted to capture in the film.
“There are parts that are hard to watch because I think about the context in which we see the images, and when you’re in a movie theater, they’re disturbing and you cover your face. But then, when they come up while you’re checking your cell phone, you just shrug and walk past them, or you get a little scared and then walk past them,” Mazzei specifies.
The creative process of the new version of ‘Faces of Death’ ran up against the contradictions of the system. “It was very difficult to find an ethical, legal and corporately approved way to include this content in the film, but for other corporations it is not difficult to make a profit by offering this content to children,” the film’s director and co-writer, Daniel Goldhaber, told EFE, reported Agencia EFE.
Here you can watch the trailer for ‘Faces of Death’, starring Barbie Ferreira.
Find out more at ‘QueOnnda.com’.
