Faces of Death filmmaker Daniel Goldhaber has rejected the notion that his movie is a “remake” of the cult 1978 original horror flick of the same name.
Faces of Death director Daniel Goldhaber insists that his movie isn’t a remake of the original 1970s slasher film.
The filmmaker has helmed the new horror movie and doesn’t think it should be labelled as a re-imagining of the cult 1978 picture that was banned in several countries due to its graphic content.
Goldhaber told People: “I think that ultimately, it’s not really a remake. It’s not even really a re-imagining. It’s a movie about Faces of Death.”
The original Faces of Death was a mockumentary film featuring numerous death scenes – varying from fatal shootings to an infamous sequence that featured monkey brains – narrated by pathologist Francis B. Gross (Michael Carr).
The new flick stars Barbie Ferreira as content creator Margot, who discovers what appears to be re-enactments of the murders shown in the original film and also features Dacre Montgomery as the mask-wearing serial killer Arthur – who is responsible for recreating the deaths.
Goldhaber hopes that audiences have “fun” watching the new movie but appreciates that it has the potential to divide opinion.
He said: “It’s a fun, horror thriller thing. It’s an ’80s slasher about Faces of Death.
“You cannot make everybody happy, but we felt confident that we had a really fun and scary and meaningful story to tell about this legendary piece of media.”
Faces of Death co-writer Isa Mazzei revealed that she and Goldhaber first came up with the idea of the project seven years ago.
She said: “Content moderation was something we were interested in beforehand.
“We have conversations about it. We found it to be a very interesting space and something very relevant to our experience like growing up kind of alongside the internet. But we never knew the story was there.”
The scribe added: “And as soon we had Faces of Death and we realised we have the idea of a killer killing people remaking this movie, the two ideas just kind of fit perfectly together.
“And we realised this was a way to kind of tell the story that would be really narratively compelling, and be able to access all of the themes and ideas about the internet that were important to us to kind of explore as filmmakers.”
Faces of Death was filmed back in 2023 and Ferreira explained that she feared that the movie may never see the light of day due to the controversy surrounding the original film.
The 29-year-old actress told Deadline: “I thought I learned a whole big lesson in Hollywood. I’m like, ‘Oh, showbiz! You could shoot a whole movie, and it doesn’t even come out.’
“It felt like such a fun, good movie, that it finally is coming out and we’re all just so hyped about it. It’s been this thing where I’m just like, ‘It’s Faces of Death. Are they going to censor us? Are they not going to put us in theatres? Are they not gonna even come out with it, period?’
“So, this moment is just so satisfying, because it’s been so long of me stressing over the fact that this wonderful, super cool, scary as f*** horror movie isn’t getting any attention because of things that don’t even have nothing to do with the art, has nothing to do with the film.”
Daniel Goldhaber: Faces of Death isn’t a remake
