Faces of Death’ Review

To understand Daniel Goldhaber’s reboot of John Alan Schwartz’s “Faces of Death,” you first need to understand that the original wasn’t just a movie. It was an actual urban legend. Children used to speak about “Faces of Death” in hushed tones, in corners of the playground, huddled in a circle, where we shared tales about rare and haunted media. It was here we first heard about the dead child’s ghost in “Three Men and a Baby,” and the extra whose corpse could allegedly be seen in the Enchanted Forest in “The Wizard of Oz.” Before creepypastas were invented, “Faces of Death” was the world’s most terrifying tagliatelle. “Faces of Death” claimed to be a real life snuff video, a collection of documentary footage of executions and accidents, where everyone on camera actually died. It was an underground film, so those claims were rarely refuted. Most people didn’t even know about it. All the rest of us knew is it was “that” film in the video store, the one people only rented on a dare. A truly cursed object. Years later, after the internet proliferated and urban legends like the ones above were debunked, “Faces of Death” lost a lot of its luster. Some of the footage was real, but it was documentary footage and newsreels. The most horrifying images were indeed faked for dramatic effect. To learn that “Faces of Death” wasn’t really a snuff film is a relief, but the loss of that rarest of artistic rarities — the thing we call “mystique” — was also palpable. What was once an urban legend is now, and always was, just another movie.