New posters and a red band trailer for Faces of Death are now online, the remake of the controversial 1978 mondo film directed by John Alan Schwartz, long banned and censored in several countries for its extreme content, and famously included among the “video nasties.”
Directed by Daniel Goldhaber and co-written with Isa Mazzei, this new take revisits one of the most controversial shockumentary titles, reworking it through a contemporary lens shaped by the spread of online content and the manipulation of images.
Faces of Death is set for a U.S. theatrical release on April 10, 2026, via Independent Film Company.
The cast includes Barbie Ferreira, Dacre Montgomery, Josie Totah, Aaron Holliday, Jermaine Fowler, and Charli XCX.
Plot: A content moderator working for a YouTube-like platform, tasked with filtering violent and disturbing material, comes across a group seemingly recreating the killings from the original film. As conflicting information spreads online, she sets out to determine whether the murders are real or staged.
Why Faces of Death Became So Controversial
The original Faces of Death (1978) remains one of the most infamous examples of the mondo movie genre. Framed as a medical documentary and narrated by the fictional pathologist Dr. Francis B. Gröss, the film blends staged sequences with real footage, depicting violent deaths, accidents, and autopsies.
This constant blurring of fact and fabrication fueled intense debate, leading many viewers to believe that what they were seeing was entirely real.
The film ran into distribution issues in several countries, yet despite the controversy, Faces of Death went on to gain strong international visibility, especially on the home video market, where it became a cult favorite among extreme cinema fans. Its success led to multiple sequels, solidifying the franchise’s place within the mondo movie scene.
The red band trailer:
The censored character posters and the official poster:
