‘Faces of Death’ Writers on Creating Dacre Montgomery’s Internet-Obsessed Killer and Importance of Using Disturbing Real Life Footage

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains mild spoilers for “Faces of Death,” now in theaters.

The original 1978 film “Faces of Death” was a cult sensation for decades, as it was rumored to show real-life footage of violence and death. When it was later revealed that the majority of the footage was scripted, the film’s lore still lingered in the minds of horror fans.

But how can anything be shocking in the same way in 2026, where footage of the most depraved acts of violence and sex, both real or imagined, is just a click away through social media?

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It was a provocative question raised by creative partners Isa Mazzei and Daniel Goldhaber, who decided to pitch a decidedly 21st-century reimagining of an analog classic. Their take on “Faces of Death,” out now in theaters via Independent Film Company and Shudder, follows a killer named Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is obsessed with the original film, recreating its violent segments in real life and releasing them on social media. Meanwhile, content moderator Margot (Barbie Ferreira) grows concerned and starts looking into the content, starting up a deadly cat-and-mouse game.

Goldhaber directed the film and co-wrote it with Mazzei, a partnership that first got attention with their 2018 film “Cam,” a horror film that examined the world of online sex work. The pair had been discussing the storytelling opportunities about a character who is a content moderator, and that synthesized with an idea of a killer recreating “Faces of Death” for the internet generation, and the structure for their story was born. It also fostered the perfect motivation for Arthur’s psychotic, modern obsessions.

“In approaching Arthur, it came out of a lot of conversations Danny and I had about how the internet traffics in attention,” Mazzei says. “It seemed very realistic that someone at the furthest end of trying to hijack this attention would commit acts of mass violence on the internet. We’ve seen examples of that, countless at this point. It was never about reaching outside of our experience and studying serial killers. It was looking at reality and saying, ‘What is this ecosystem that we’ve created in encouraging people to its most extreme?'”

In the pursuit of bringing truth to the screen, as well as mirroring the original film, the majority of the clips that Margot interacts with at her job are sourced from real-life videos.

“Most of them are licensed and real and sourced from the internet,” Mazzei says. “I had a research assistant, and we just went out and found a lot of them. That was important because I really care about the internet feeling authentic. Going out and sourcing videos that spoke to very different parts of the internet experience — some of them are funny, some of them are horrifying, some of them are just banal — was really important.”

Also critical to the experience was making a mask and outfit for Arthur that felt fresh, real and practical. Goldhaber says the mask was a collaboration between himself, Montgomery and costume designer Lauren Bott, and hinged on a conscious limitation.

“Our constraint was, ‘Arthur is getting everything off Amazon, right?’ So every single thing he has in the movie, you can buy yourself,” he says. “From there, a big point of Dacre’s inspiration with the character was texture. He has quite severe OCD, and if a texture is off for him, it really triggers his OCD. He really wanted to lean into that with Arthur, because Arthur similarly has these control issues and a fear of blood. He became really obsessed with these stocking textures. You see the way he likes to rub his body when he has his skin suit on.

“We were working with that and thinking, ‘You have a character who’s trying to create his own horror iconography with what he’s doing.’ So that also helps,” Goldhaber continues. “He’s able to be smart enough to think of a fresh mask. He has his stocking, but also wants something that hides his face and brings his aesthetic in line with his mannequins, but he wants to be able to order it cheaply because he’s afraid to go to the store because he’s too anxious to be around people. So he gets a cheap 3D thing from China and sews that mask to his stocking. But then he realizes, ‘Wait, that’s not enough.’ So he gets red contact lenses because he wants to summon the feeling of the skeleton from the original ‘Faces of Death’ cover art. We tried to marry to the process that Arthur himself would have had.”

In conjuring a villain who reflected modern evil so specifically, “Faces of Death” achieved Goldhaber and Mazzei’s ultimate goal with the film.

“We wanted the movie to feel evil,” Goldhaber says. “We wanted it to feel like the spirit of ‘Faces of Death’ had possessed our camera and was making the movie itself.”

Watch the “Faces of Death” trailer below.