Director and cast break down the movie’s gory finale

In Faces of Death, filmmakers Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei (Cam, How to Blow Up a Pipeline), update the original cult classic “shockumentary” for the Instagram Reels era. John Alan Schwartz’s 1978 Faces of Death presents (mostly) fake footage of death and violence as the real thing, while in the 2026 film, a social-media-platform content moderator named Margot (Barbie Ferreira) becomes obsessed with an anonymous user who’s posting violent clips inspired by that infamous ’70s VHS tape. Convinced these viral videos are real snuff films, she tracks down the killer, Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), leading to a violent confrontation, as the movie pivots from internet-noir thriller into traditional slasher territory for a bloodsoaked finale.

For Goldhaber, who co-wrote and directed Faces of Death, shooting that final scene was a career highlight.

“That was really a dream come true,” he tells Polygon.

For Ferreira, it was a “slippery” good time.

“It was the funnest thing I’ve done in my career,” she says. “Just letting go of all inhibitions and being covered in sticky, nasty blood, sweat, Dacre sweat, my sweat, everyone’s sweat.”

To break down the final battle between Margot and Arthur in Faces of Death, Polygon spoke to Goldhaber, Mazzei, Ferreira, and Montgomery, who revealed the toughest part of shooting the scene, why it had to take place in Florida, and the stoner comedy that inspired it.

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for the end of Faces of Death.]

“I had to come in built”

“It’s such an intense moment after this kind of cat/mouse story,” Montgomery says. “Arthur chasing Margot, Margot chasing Arthur, and that all comes to a head in this scene.”

For the first half of Faces of Death, the two main characters are linked by their respective screens and separated by about 600 miles, with Margot living in New Orleans while Arthur stalks and murders his victims in Florida. But as Margot begins to track the serial killer down, Arthur takes notice and sets a digital trap to trace her location. He shows up at her apartment, drugs her with fentanyl, and brings her back to the idyllic suburban home where he films his executions and uploads them to the internet.

But Margot doesn’t go down without a fight. She escapes and calls the police, only for Arthur to convince them that Margot is mentally ill, dangerous, and stalking him. After the cops send her to a nearby hospital, Margot returns to the murder house and manages to kill Arthur after a brutal, messy fight. She then uploads a recording of his confession and subsequent death to the internet before collapsing on the ground, exhausted and covered in blood, but triumphant.

The all-out brawl is reminiscent of the final showdowns in classic slashers like Halloween or Friday the 13th, where a “Final Girl” just barely manages to survive against a terrifying enemy. But Goldhaber had a very different movie in mind.

“There’s an unbelievable fight sequence in Pineapple Express,” he says. “It’s just so great, because you have these people that just do not know how to fight, ripping into each other. It’s so entertaining and so grounded, but also so satisfying. I’d always really wanted to do a fight scene with two people who have no idea how to fight going at it with each other.”

Arthur and Margot have no idea what they’re doing, but the actors put in a ton of work behind the scenes. The entire scene was also carefully choreographed and rehearsed with a stunt team. Ferreira also bulked up so she could go toe-to-toe with Montogomery.

“I was squatting 200 pounds before that,” she says. “If I was going to fight a grown man in this movie. I had to come in built.”

“They were whaling on each other for two days nonstop”

Image: IFC

Goldhaber and co-writer/producer Mazzei chose to film that final fight at the very beginning of production, which meant starting with the most challenging possible scene.

“It was super intense in person,” Montgomery says. “Even if you were to disregard the physical aspect, it was tons of blood.”

When Margot returns to the house, Arthur has already murdered his other victims and attached their heads to the mannequins he uses to reenact scenes from the original Faces of Death. It’s a gruesome reveal, which Montgomery says was just as jarring on set as it is in the theater.

“Those heads on the mannequins were actually insanely realistically crafted,” he recalls. “I just remember those faces staring back at you. The faces of death in the room were super intense.”

Once the actual fighting started, neither actor held back.

“The only real way you can accomplish that is to have actors as game as Barbie and Dacre just throwing themselves at each other,” Goldhaber says. “They were whaling on each other for two days nonstop, and never hesitated to go all-in. One of the hardest things about that is maintaining that level of intensity. Barbie lost her voice.”

Image: IFC

Neither of the actors seemed to mind that intensity. Looking back, they clearly enjoyed the experience.

“Hopefully I wasn’t too intense, but Barbie didn’t just match my intensity, she beat that. She had even more energy,” Montgomery says. “And that got me really fired up. Because of that, it feels even more realistic, because we’re both just absolutely, in real life, putting in as much effort as we can without destroying each other’s bodies.”

“We were stuck in this basement in this garage for two days,” Ferreira adds. “We weren’t allowed to walk anywhere. We literally had to stay where we were because we were on location, so we couldn’t get fake blood everywhere. It was super fun. Dacre and I, we were just fighting, scrapping.”

“Florida’s just a place where a serial killer lives”

Image: IFC

Goldhaber filmed the scene on location in Florida, which enhances the experience, not just because it feels more real, but because the eerie nature of Florida’s cookie-cutter suburbs adds an extra dimension of horror to an already terrifying story.

Mazzei still remembers one grisly moment in particular that confirmed they had made the right choice.

“We had all of these hyper-realistic body parts just lying on the front lawn of this perfect neighborhood,” she says. “I think that it was almost like a metaphor for the movie itself — that image of this supposed suburban ideal.”

Why did it have to be Florida? Goldhaber puts it simply.

“Florida’s just a place where a serial killer lives.”

Faces of Death is in theaters now.