As a Gen Xer, I grew up at a time when the Faces of Death series was the most terrifying of all the boxes at the local video store. They were always on a shelf behind the counter, forbidden to my friends and me by the guy working behind that counter (not to mention our parents). The movies took on mythical proportions on the playground. Now, the series is being rebooted as (possibly) part of the 2026 movie schedule, and I just have to wonder, can it still work?
They Weren’t Actually Snuff Films, But We Didn’t Know That
For years, the playground chatter was always the same: “Have you seen Faces of Death? You know it’s a movie that shows actual people dying, right?” There was a clear line drawn between those who had seen one of the straight-to-video horror movies and those who had not. “It’s totally real! The guy gets electrocuted, and his eyes pop out!”
The belief among the 3rd-grade intelligentsia was that everything in the movies (there were eventually four official movies in the franchise, which can be watched with a Shudder subscription) was 100% real. The guy getting eaten by an alligator? Real. The guy getting electrocuted in the electric chair? Real. The assassin being interviewed? Very real. We didn’t know what “snuff films” were, but we believed that the movies contained actual moments of gruesome deaths.
I Finally Saw The Movies
I eventually saw the first one, late at night, at a friend’s house. His dad had a copy, and we managed to sneak into his parents’ bedroom and lift the VHS, playing quietly in the basement with all the lights off. I didn’t sleep for a week and, honestly, the images are still burned into my mind. To this day, I’ve never been so freaked out by a movie.
A few years later, Faces of Death IV was released, and a bunch of us went to a midnight screening at the local art house cinema. I was 16 by then, but I somehow missed the message that most of the Faces of Death series was not actually found footage or a snuff film. Most of the scenes in the anthologies were recreations, and they were no different than any other horror movie.
I recoiled in horror as my friend gleefully laughed at the traumatic scenes I was watching in the theater. What was wrong with him? Was he actually a psychopath? After the movie, as I was still shaking from what I’d witnessed, we grabbed burgers at Steak n Shake, and he explained that it was “all fake.” I was as shocked by that revelation as I was by what I’d just seen.
He Was Right, It Was Mostly Fake
While there are a lot of scenes in the movie that are news reports of actual tragedies, and historical footage of horrific events in history, like The Holocaust and the crash of Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182, the most gruesome stuff was “fake.” It was fake in that it was like any other horror movie, scenes meant to look real, and gross, but were good old-fashioned filmmaking. That’s what my friend was laughing at, because he knew all that somehow.
This was all in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, well before the internet, Twitter, and the dark web. Now it is possible to see horrible, traumatizing, gruesome deaths for real. We’ve all made that mistake and clicked on that link marked “not safe for life” and instantly regretted it. Back then, however, none of that was possible. I’m not even sure how real “snuff films” really were, but in junior high and high school, I was sure they existed, and somehow the local theater was allowed to show them.
2026 Brings A New Faces Of Death
Now we’ve got a new, rebooted version of Faces of Death on the way. It’s scheduled to be released in 2026 (we think), though it is still looking for a distributor at the moment. The movie, from director Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and starring Euphoria’s Barbie Ferreira, Dacre Montgomery (Stranger Things), and Charli XCX, sounds like a modern take on the idea, focusing on a YouTube-like platform.
That premise makes sense, of course. Platforms like YouTube are in a near-constant battle with what is real and what is fake, as well as what goes too far in some videos. In the age of AI, that is a question every outlet and platform is dealing with. In this movie, it’s focused on whether the deaths are real or fake, just like that line was blurred in the original series. It has real promise, in my opinion, if it’s asking big questions like that.
I wonder, in a time when we are both more desensitized to the obscene and the sensational, and at the same time cracking down on those same things on platforms like YouTube, can the premise be believable? I hope so.
How Can It Work?
So how, in 2026, with all that is available on the internet, from videos of people being beheaded to fiery car crashes, can a movie like Faces of Death elicit the same kind of nightmares that the originals did, even if you’d never seen them? Well, we’re going to find out, and I’m pretty fascinated.
It’s the kind of fascination that gets me to click on those links, only now I know that it will all be Hollywood trickery. The truth is, I’ve never really revisited those old films because once the illusion is pulled back, they are really pretty bad movies. They relied on word of mouth among mostly young men and teenagers to work as intended.
In a lot of ways, Faces of Death was before its time. It was a documentary-like, but mostly fictional movie that was meant to look and feel real. That wasn’t really a thing yet, and that’s why I was so upset by it and why it was one of the most controversial series of all time. It remains to be seen if that approach can still work in 2026.
