Barbie Ferreira drowned herself in horrifying old internet videos to make Faces of Death

2 weeks ago 5

Published Apr 9, 2026, 11:00 AM EDT

'I tried to get back into that headspace of the early internet: You click a link, you accidentally see something crazy.'

A low-angle shot of Margot (Barbie Ferreira) staring up at the glow of a TV screen in a dark room as she watches footage from the cult horror VHS Faces of Death in the fictional 2026 remake of the same name.

When filmmaker Daniel Goldhaber was in his early 20s, he spent a summer working as a content moderator for a now-defunct social media startup. A decade later, that experience helped inform his reimagining of the '70s “shockumentary” Faces of Death, which he co-wrote with Isa Mazzei. In their new reboot of the notorious 1978 cult classic, a content moderator working for a TikTok-like company becomes obsessed with a mysterious user who posts gory videos inspired by the original Faces of Death and begins to wonder if the violent content she’s watching is actually real. The seed for that idea came from the director’s summer job.

“It was a very different kind of platform and situation,” Goldhaber tells Polygon, “but that inspired the world of the film and a general approach to understanding how these images affect you.”

After Legendary Entertainment acquired the rights to Faces of Death in 2021, the studio asked Mazzei and Goldhaber to develop a script. The duo, who previously worked together on Cam and How to Blow Up a Pipeline, leaned on their own experience growing up online to adapt what seemed like an unadaptable movie.

“We grew up with the internet,” Mazzei says. “So we don't really view it as, ‘We make films about the internet.’ We just make films about existing in real life. Most of us spend hours and hours a day on our phone.”

Large chunks of Faces of Death involve its protagonist Margot (Barbie Ferreira) staring at various screens. While the character notably doesn’t own a smartphone, her content moderator job means she spends most of her waking hours watching horrific clips in her cubicle and making snap decisions as to whether the company should remove them or not. (The answer is almost always not.)

While Goldhaber based those scenes on his own life experience, he admits to simplifying the actual process in Faces of Death.

“I have a friend who works now as a moderator for a major social media platform,” he says. “Her big criticism of the movie is, ‘It is way more complicated than you make it look.’”

After clocking out at work each day, Margot goes home and scours Reddit for advice on how to track down the anonymous killer behind those videos. To shoot those scenes, the filmmakers actually built entire real subreddits and filled them with fake profiles and comments to create a realistic experience.

Mazzei wrote most of those Reddit posts herself.

“It's very important to us that the internet in the movie feels dynamic and tactile and interesting,” she says, “the same way that going on your phone is dynamic and tactile and interesting.”

Meanwhile, to prepare for the role, Ferreira dove deep into the world of content moderation. That included both watching lots of messed up videos and learning about the job itself.

“I do think AI is probably going to take over that job,” Ferreira tells Polygon, “but there are still real human beings who are paid $11 an hour to watch the worst things you've ever seen on the internet and be like: yes or no. Most people do not stay very long because it is so traumatizing and you don't get paid enough for the hazards it does to your psyche.”

The actor also asked Goldhaber to send her examples of the sort of clips her character would be watching while at work as a content moderator, since those visuals weren’t actually added in until after filming was finished. During the actual shoot, she was mostly just staring at an empty blue screen.

“Danny would send me clips of what he was thinking about adding in,” Ferreira says. “I asked him to. It wasn't like he sent them out of nowhere. I was like, ‘Send me the videos.’ And he was like, ‘Are you sure?' I said, ‘Absolutely.’”

Watching those videos helped Ferreira understand what was happening inside Margot’s head as she becomes numb to the sort of violent and graphic visuals that content moderators have to watch every day. But it also did damage to the actor’s own psyche that took months to repair.

“It creates a really nasty headspace that’s hard to shake off,” she says. “I've watched a lot of really bad videos, a lot of accidents, a lot of iPhone footage of people, a lot of older LiveLeak kind of videos. I tried to get back into that headspace of the early internet: You click a link, you accidentally see something crazy. I had that headspace for a little bit. And then after that, I watched SpongeBob and That's So Raven for maybe three months and just got a lobotomy from it. I had to shake it off.”

Faces of Death releases in theaters on April 10.

Read Entire Article