Filming has officially begun on the long-gestating Faces of Death remake from Cam filmmakers Isa Mazzei and Daniel Goldhaber. Originally announced back in 2021, the project is spearheaded by Legendary Entertainment and takes a more modern twist on the premise of the controversial cult classic.

Released in 1978, Faces of Death is widely regarded as one of the most controversial films ever created, following a pathologist examining the various gruesome ways that people around the world have died. John Alan Schwartz‘s film is presented in a documentary-style format and became mythologized for allegedly showing footage of real murders. The reality of it all is a bit blurrier with most of the footage having been staged or spliced with real footage in an effort to shock and horrify. It was more than enough for the film to be banned in numerous countries and labeled a video nasty, but the gory nature of the project earned it a place among cult classic stardom and numerous sequels. It also laid the groundwork for the found-footage genre later accelerated by The Blair Witch Project.

The quasi-remake from Legendary recently brought in a pair of television stars in Dacre Montgomery and Barbie Ferreira as leads. It instead follows a female moderator of a site akin to YouTube as she sorts through content unfit for the platform while dealing with her own personal trauma. During her search, she stumbles across a group looking to recreate the murders presented in the original film. With modern fears of deepfakes and scarily-accurate A.I. content generation ever-present, the question remains whether the heinous videos are actually real. Saved By the Bell‘s Josie Totah is also set to star.

The Faces of Death Remake Will Spotlight the Violence Perpetuated Online

Mazzei and Goldhaber both write and direct the Faces of Death remake with their Cam producer and Swiss Army Man crew member Isabelle Link-Levy helping to develop the story. In remaking the film, the directors wanted not just to explore the thinning boundary between what’s real and fake but also how the internet plays a role in stoking violence. “Faces of Death was one of the first viral video tapes, and we are so lucky to be able to use it as a jumping-off point for this exploration of cycles of violence and the way they perpetuate themselves online,” the pair said in a recent statement.

The two grabbed a strong duo to headline the project too. Ferreira was a fan favorite as Kat on the HBO series Euphoria and felt right at home in the horror genre appearing in Jordan Peele‘s Nope last year. Montgomery, meanwhile, became a frightening presence aboard Stranger Things as bad boy Billy Hargrove, the violent stepbrother of Max (Sadie Sink) who tormented the kids of Hawkins and eventually became a thrall of the Mind Flayer. Faces of Death marks his second horror project in recent memory as he also boarded the ghost story Went Up the Hill back in October.

Stay tuned here at Collider for more on the Faces of Death remake as production gets underway.

via Collider