The Full ‘Faces of Death’ Trailer Is Here to Eagerly Give You the Ick

You can’t just remake Faces of Death in the traditional sense. The 1978 original lurched out of the shadows at the tail end of the mondo film craze and was presented to audiences as a series of authentic clips depicting gruesome footage of real human and animal deaths. Of course, those claims were later debunked, but a seedy, forbidden quality lingers even decades later. Can the new Faces of Death movie hope to capture that same sick feeling? Should it even try?

The first full trailer for the film, directed by Daniel Goldhaber and written by Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei (who previously collaborated on Cam and How to Blow Up a Pipeline), suggests there is some method behind this madness.

And yes, it’s a red-band trailer—Faces of Death‘s marketing approach is seemingly designed to remind us how shocking the movie’s subject matter will be—meaning you’ll have to actually go to YouTube (and be signed in) to watch it.

Definitely some disturbing “found-footage” imagery there, and also hints at the frame story featuring a suitably horrified-looking Barbie Ferreira (Euphoria).

Here’s the official synopsis, which ties it all together: “In Faces of Death, the exploration of the original film’s infamous ‘is it real or not?’ conceit continues as a woman (Ferreira) working as a content moderator for a major video platform discovers what appears to be reenactments of murders from the original film. In an online world where nothing can be trusted, she must determine whether the violence is fiction, or unfolding in real time.”

So there’s a bit of Blow-Up (or Blow-Out, speaking of remakes) at play as the content moderator becomes convinced she’s uncovered some very dangerous footage and must determine whether she’s right or not. There’s also a Black Mirror feel to that idea, as technology becomes overtaken and misused for deeply sinister purposes.

The idea that the new murders are copied from Faces of Death is also a nice (if ghastly) touch—as is not trying to replicate the “real or not” situation for viewers, who are well aware this is a fictional film, and instead centering that on Ferreira’s character, who has the right narrative context to make her own perceptions ambiguous.

The rest of the cast includes Dacre Montgomery, Josie Totah, Aaron Holliday, Jermaine Fowler, and the suddenly ubiquitous Charli XCX. Who will survive, and whose agony will be captured on tape? Find out April 10 when Faces of Death hits theaters.

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