I don't often bail out of movies mid-way, but there's a scene towards the back half of Faces of Death where I realized life's just too short for this shit.
Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works as a content moderator at a tiktok-like mindrot farm, where she notices a series of weird videos that look like snuff films. Worried that they might be the work of a serial killer, she starts investigating... only to come into the sphere of their creator (Dacre Montgomery)
The script on this thing (by director Daniel Goldhaber plus Isa Mazzei) is, to put it bluntly, a complete fucking disaster. The premise - that a serial killer is remaking scenes from the infamous 1978 film of the same name - is kind of clever, even if the particulars are pretty dumb, and the first half of the movie is decent; There are some missteps (the scene where the script cack-handedly has the protagonist enunciate both its themes and her motivations got a huge eye roll), but it's pretty compelling overall, mostly thanks to some strong work from the principals. Then at around the hour mark the plot really kicks in, and there's a cavalcade of stupid decisions, plot holes, contrived situations... This movie is back-loaded with dumb shit.
I dunno; Maybe it all comes together at the end and I'll never know - I'm sure as hell not giving it the benefit of doubt. I don't think these people could come up with anything that could make up for one of the worst instances of unrealistic police ineptitude I've seen in a movie in a while, coming right after a series of stupid decisions which had me actively rooting for the main character's death. It's been a long time since a movie annoyed me this much. I mean - Ick was bad enough to make me come here to vent right after watching it, but I did get to the end of that one.
It's a shame, because the actors do a good job and some of the filmmaking and editing is strong... but the writing and plotting fails, and badly. Fuck this noise.
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