'Faces Of Death' Movie Explained And Summary: Is Margot Trapped In The Validation Loop?

Exaggeration and excess have always found an audience, from explicit to violent content, anything that is extreme works, the exploitation genre caters to this obsession, from medical videos or mondo films to cult classics such as the original Faces of Death (1978), all catered to the audience’s secret desire for the forbidden. In this economy, where attention is scattered, creators often resort to the age-old trick of making extreme content to get views. The more bizarre your videos, the more widely they will be shared. From funeral videos where the corpse makes a guest appearance, to performing dance routines at dangerous spots, creators have gone above and beyond to keep the viewers hooked to the screen. Now, what if someone starts committing murders to cater to this fleeting attention? Will the viewers simply watch, like, and continue to scroll, or will the vivid visuals prick their conscience and drive them to do something to stop the killer? Daniel Goldhaber’s Faces of Death attempts to find an answer.

Spoiler Alert

Was Margot responsible for her sister’s death?

Margot Romero, the protagonist of the film, works as a content moderator for Kino, a social media platform. Her job involves watching flagged videos and verifying if they should be removed, published with a trigger warning, or require no action at all. Most of Margot’s colleagues hate their jobs, it is either too boring for some or mentally taxing for others. Margot doesn’t mind though, she likes the fact that she has some control over what goes online, and she believes her work truly matters. We soon discover that Margot’s personal history has played a role in her working as a content moderator. Just like most youngsters, Margot used to be completely hooked on social media; she was a creator who didn’t mind taking a little risk to grab the attention of her viewers. In a desperate attempt to create a viral video, Margot and her sister, Sophie, performed a dance routine on a train track. They could hear the train approaching, and while Sophie panicked, Margot thought the element of danger would bring them more views. Margot managed to get off the track at the right time, but her sister couldn’t, and the train ran over her, resulting in her immediate death. Margot, obviously, never really recovered from the loss, and she had enough reason to blame herself for the tragedy. The video was released by the cops, and while Margot got the virality she’d been chasing, it didn’t taste sweet anymore. 

From then on, she chose to stay off social media, and her job gave her a sense of purpose. One day, Margot comes across a beheading video, and the lighting, the set, and the overall aesthetics convince her that it is staged, so she allows the video to stay on the platform. Soon, there is another video, with the same aesthetics and gory details, she isn’t sure if it’s fake or real anymore so she consults her boss, Josh, who asks her to leave it up. He explains that DIY Horror is the new trend, and they must ‘give the people what they want,’ but his naive response doesn’t stop Margot from digging deep. She wonders if the killer is intentionally staging the murders in a way that won’t get flagged, and her suspicion grows stronger when another execution video shows up with the same visual style, mannequins on camera, and excessive gore. She flags the third video and tries to remove it from the platform, but she just can’t get over the possibility that there’s a serial killer on the loose, who is proudly murdering on-camera and has garnered a fair share of followers hungry for more gore content. She tries to discuss the issue with Josh, but he is quick to remind her that they aren’t morality police, and if they took the issue to law enforcement, it could have a negative impact on their platform. 

So, Margot is left to deal with this constant feeling of discomfort all by herself, but instead of not doing anything about it, she decides to ask the internet sleuths if they think the video is real or fake. She receives a lot of responses, and most are convinced that the video is real. Soon, someone points out that the execution videos are exactly like the ones shown in the 1978 film Faces of Death. Margot’s roommate and best friend, Ryan, is a horror buff, and when she asks him about the film, he explains it became a cult classic, especially because it was believed that all the scenes in the film were real, but eventually people got to know that most of them were fake. Ryan thought that if someone is replicating Faces of Death scenes, then it’s very likely that the videos are fake but Margot isn’t really convinced. She knows that the cops won’t believe her theory, and she needs something concrete to prove that she’s onto something and that’s when she decides to get her hands on the original HD file and run a metadata test to find out if it indeed is real, and only then can she go to the cops. 

How did Arthur find Margot?

Margot lures Josh with concert tickets and offers to cover for him, and well, Josh, being the naive guy that he is, happily accepts the offer. He gives her access to the database, and as soon as the office is empty, Margot pulls out her hard drive and copies all the videos onto her device. When she reaches home, she starts working on her plan, and uploads the videos online. She shares the link on Reddit and hopes someone might be able to confirm the authenticity of the video but what Margot doesn’t take into account is the possibility that the murderer might be keeping a tab on Reddit, and he can lure her to his trap. The killer, Arthur Spevak, comes up with a plan to find out who is trying to expose him. He creates a trackable link to a news article that discussed the disappearance of social media influencer Samantha Gravinsky, and responds with it on the Reddit thread that Margot had created. Margot obviously gets a little excited when she notices a response on her video, so she falls right into the trap and clicks on the click and within seconds Arthur knows who ‘lavendergrl98’ is, and he also finds Margot’s address. Meanwhile, Margot is convinced that Samantha too has been kidnapped by the killer, and it is only a matter of time before she appears in one of his videos. Margot is right; Arthur targets slightly famous individuals, from a television anchor, to a film director, to a social media influencer. I guess, this was his way of doing a collab video! 

Arthur arrives at Margot’s apartment, and as usual, the gay best friend is sacrificed first. Ryan tries to fight back, but Arthur always keeps a dose of fentanyl handy and he injects Ryan with it. By the time Margot enters the living room, it’s already too late, her friend is lying on the floor bleeding to death, and she passes out after being injected with fentanyl too. When Margot regains consciousness, she discovers that she is being held captive in a cage, her mouth is taped and her hands are tied. She notices her sweater lying on a chair close to her cage and she uses all her strength to grab hold of it. She manages to get the lipstick knife that Ryan had gifted her and uses it to free herself. She also helps Samantha, and together, they attempt to escape. But the one thing Margot has realized is that she needs evidence to prove whatever she has been through. She had previously spoken to the cops about the link between the videos and Samantha’s disappearance, but without hard evidence, they refused to believe her. So, before trying to find an escape, she decides to steal Arthur’s hard drive, which has the raw footage on it, but Samantha, who has been held captive for days, refuses to wait any longer and attempts to escape on her own. She breaks the glass panel on the door, resulting in a loud sound that immediately grabs Arthur’s attention. He was busy trying to dissolve Ryan’s mutilated body in acid and live-streaming the process with his mask on. His followers didn’t care if it was real or fake, his videos were shocking enough to keep them hooked, and that was all that mattered. 

As soon as Arthur hears the glass shatter, he grabs his gun and fires at Samantha. He misses his first shot, but the second one hits the target. Samantha is hit but she isn’t dead, yet. Arthur figures that if Samantha has tried to escape, then Margot won’t be far behind. But unfortunately Margot is quite fast and by the time he pulls the trigger, it’s too late. Margot breaks down when she discovers that the hard drive she’d managed to sneak out has been damaged as a result of a gunshot. The cops come to her rescue and she tries to explain what she has been through, hoping this time she will be trusted, but Arthur is one step ahead of her. He knows that Margot will go to the cops, so he decides to call the cops and tell them that a woman in a blue blouse has tried to trespass onto his property because she has lately been obsessed with him. The cops arrive at Arthur’s house and Margot confirms that he is the one who’d held her captive in his basement, but the cops start doubting Margot when they receive information about the trespassing. Arthur intentionally triggers Margot by mentioning her sister’s death, and when she reacts aggressively, the cops assume that maybe she really isn’t mentally stable. 

Margot is taken to a hospital and her injuries are treated, and the nurse mentions she has found fentanyl in her blood, leading her to suggest that Margot consult a social worker who can help her with her addiction. Margot is in tears, she has received a message from Arthur asking her to return his hard drive in an hour, and if she fails, Samatha and Drew (his victim Neal’s son) will die. She is in a peculiar situation where she needs help, but the people who can help her are convinced that she is mentally unstable, so she basically has to take down a serial killer all by herself, but is she up to the task?

Did Arthur die?

In Faces of Death, we don’t really get to know Arthur well, but from the little that the film discloses, it is evident that Arthur didn’t have a social life at all. He possibly had always been a lonely kid who enviously kept a tab on the popular students in his class and secretly hoped that one day he would be way beyond their reach. But life didn’t really reward him the way he’d hoped for; he had probably spent most of his time on the computer during his teenage years, obsessing over the dark web and gruesome horror films. He ended up with a boring job at ‘Signaler Wireless,’ but it also gave him the perfect cover to work on his notorious plans. He wanted to be famous online, and he was well aware that ‘Arthur Spevak’ wasn’t intriguing or attractive enough to get a lot of views, and so he created an alternate online personality, a masked man, daring enough to drug his targets and kill them on camera. He knew that the algorithm and the audience love remakes, which was why replicated scenes of Faces of Death created instant interest among his target audience. The likes, the shares, the encouraging comments excited him, and he felt the compulsive need to keep making videos. He also took pride in his craft, and with every video, he tried to make sure that the filmmaking improved. Arthur needed help but his parents were most likely dead, and he didn’t really have anyone to tell him that he had turned into a monster in an attempt to chase clout. Interestingly, even before he made it to Margot’s apartment, he’d drawn a sketch of her in the clothes that he’d later put her in, suggesting how thoroughly planned every action was. 

Margot decides to confront the killer again, this time she’d taken a good dose of Narcan, assuming that Arthur would again try to inject her with fentanyl. According to IMDb, this particular scene is a goof-up, because apparently you can’t evade the effect of fentanyl by taking Narcan, the effect doesn’t really last that long! Margot makes it to his house with her lipstick knife, and Arthur’s only concern at first is whether or not Margot is a fan of his work. He’d seen her train video, and he had been under the assumption that she would get him (well, because she too had gone to an extreme length to become viral). Arthur is convinced that the people love him, Kino loves him, news channels and advertisers love him, gun companies and home security companies love him, and so does the government! He strongly believes he is basically doing a service to all of them, by giving them good business with just a little sacrifice. Margot soon discovers that Arthur has already murdered Samantha and Drew, and he has mutilated their bodies and sewn their faces to the bodies of the mannequins. Arthur hands Margot a fentanyl syringe, and adds that he simply wants to work with her. He hoped that Margot would cooperate so that together they could make a viral video. Margot doesn’t resist, she injects herself with fentanyl and waits for the right moment to strike Arthur. As soon as he comes near her, she grabs her pocket knife and repeatedly stabs him in the abdomen. Oh, there’s also another strange fact about Arthur, he is a serial killer who hates getting his hands bloody, the irony! As Arthur screams at the sight of blood, Margot goes ahead and repeatedly stabs his leg. Arthur tried to defend himself, and the two got into an intense scuffle, trying their best to kill each other. Thankfully, Margot manages to grab hold of a sharp long rod, stabs Arthur’s leg with it, and eventually uses the object to stab Arthur in his chest again and again. 

In Faces of Death’s ending, Margot reveals that she has recorded the entire event through the tiny camera she has been wearing all this time. She has realized that people will only believe her if she catches Arthur in the act and gets a confession out of him, so she ultimately gives the people what they want, a video recording of the entire incident. 

Is Margot Now Trapped In The Validation Loop?

Now, Margot could’ve handed over the video to the cops, but instead, she decided to upload it online. There can be two reasons for this: one, she had lost trust in the police and she figured they wouldn’t be able to ignore the video if the whole world saw it, or two, she wanted to show the world the courage she had demonstrated in taking down a serial killer all by herself, she too felt the need to get some validation, and what better place for it than the internet? Even if I assume that she did it because of reason one, the fact that she added that she is the ‘Train Girl’ underlines her need to associate her internet name with something brave and just. She’d become a laughingstock after the train video was released online, and she wanted to remind her haters what she was truly capable of. Arthur couldn’t stop laughing as he watched Margot upload the video from his device, he’d always wanted to make a video with her, and while things didn’t really go according to his plan, he did at least get that collab with her. 

Arthur plays the Faces of Death on his phone, he is almost dying but well, he plans to do it quite cinematically. In the film, Francis B. Gröss tells his audience that, after studying death closely, he has come to realize that souls in each human remain travelers forever, and the circle never really comes to an end; death can be seen as the end of a new beginning and the beginning of the end, he leaves it to the audience to decide. Margot throws away Arthur’s phone and watches him struggle to breathe. The video that he’d played from the original film explains the final scene. Margot watches the computer screen with anticipation as the video gets uploaded to the Kino app. She breathes a sigh of relief when a ‘congratulations’ message pops up on her screen, the video has finally been uploaded. Immediately comments start to pour in, someone asks for the location of the event, someone else says ‘we stan a queen,’ a comment states ‘she unalived him for our pleasure’ and another reads ‘homie won’t be in the sequel,’ you get the drift. To some, Margot deserves appreciation, for others it’s an elaborate joke, but what is actually interesting is Margot’s expression as she glances through the comments. Most of her life, she has chased the feeling of being famous, of her video becoming viral, of her becoming the talk of the town, and it is finally happening on her own terms, and her facial expression suggests that she is living for it! Just as Francis B. Gröss had stated, it’s a circle with no defined beginning and end, while for Arthur the day marks his end, for Margot, it is the beginning of her new life as an online sensation. It’s almost as if Arthur’s obsessive spirit has found a place in her body, and Margot experiences the tremendous joy of hearing the sound of constant notifications after uploading a video. 

Will she go to any length just like Arthur to maintain her online fame? Or will she finally break the cycle and talk about the dangers of social media addiction? Well, I’m hoping Margot won’t go around killing people, but I think she will soak in the joy of finally becoming an online sensation. This one video is going to open various doors for her, from television interviews to book deals, a lot of good things can happen in Margot’s life. She might end up talking about the negative effects of social media on social media while enjoying the perks of being an influencer! But I also think, deep down, she might feel like a fraud, because once she’s famous she will always feel the need to ‘give people what they want,’ and that is exactly what she’d wanted to stay away from after Sophie’s death. So, basically, she will fall back into the validation loop, and even if she tries to escape it, she will find herself gravitating towards it. But then again, only she can stop herself from falling into the trap. 

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