Watching Faces of Death is a fascinating experience in 2026, made even more fascinating by the release of a reboot film that plays with the original’s infamy in the language of the social media age. I spent so much of my childhood and early adulthood only knowing of the film’s existence through its name and reputation, and through thousands of incorrectly labeled videos on file sharing sites.

For so many of us born in its aftermath but before its wider availability, John Alan Schwartz‘s film was a ghost, a film so shocking and unreachable that it might never have existed to begin with.

It would be easy now, with cult horror films on streaming services worldwide and clips of real gore and suffering a click away at all times, to feel that the film’s aura has faded. Like Cannibal Holocaust and, to a lesser extent, The Blair Witch Project, Faces of Death has been deconstructed and demystified so much that the original footage might appear now as clinical at best and hokey at worst, but somehow that’s not what’s happened. Faces of Death still retains something of that doomy, mondo reputation, and thanks to a new 4K release from Vinegar Syndrome, it actually feels downright dangerous again. 

The new disc, presented in a lovingly crafted package that includes a booklet of essays, a pair of stickers mimicking the film’s original advertising, and more, begins with standard boutique release fare. There’s a new 4K scan of the original negatives, a Blu-ray disc loaded with archival features, a new featurette interviewing fans and followers of the film from around the world, and an archival commentary track.

In typical Vinegar Syndrome fashion, this is all put together with affection, wit, and attention to detail, and if I had one major gripe with it, I’d simply say that I wish more of the features on the Blu-ray had been ported over to the 4K. Still, this is all solid stuff, and if the Faces of Death 4K stopped there, it would make a handsome addition to any collection. 

But it doesn’t. 

There’s something lurking in this two-disc set that stood out to me not just as interesting additions to the package, but as genuine enhancements to the Faces of Death experience beyond a 4K restoration. That restoration, it should be clear, looks great, and diminishes none of the haunting power of watching a real suicide shot on grainy video or following a handheld camera as it tracks hypnotically around an autopsy table, but it’s not what opened my eyes to what this film can still do as a piece of horror cinema. For that, we have to get into the sound.

You’ve got several options on this Faces of Death 4K, including the default restored soundtrack and a track featuring the original mono audio, bringing the film back to its analog roots in a way that anyone who managed to snag a copy on VHS will appreciate. But there’s also the option of turning all of that off entirely, and playing an audio track that offers nothing but the film’s half-droning, half-whimsical score. I have no idea why this feature is there, but watching Faces of Death again with that option selected, something about it felt flat-out revelatory.

After all, what do we come to Faces of Death for in the first place, when we’re young and hungry horror fans eager to test our limits and push our experiences into the most infamous of genre films? We come to it for the death, of course, and for the way the film blends the staged and the real, the dramatic and the prosaic, to create a montage of morbidity with the goal of overwhelming our senses.

Taking out the dialogue, the voiceover, and the sound effects brings the film back to the core of its impact, allowing you to focus on how it was assembled and paced, what the shots are able to achieve, how some death lingers while other death passes with the flash of a bullet. I expected to rewatch this film on 4K to admire technical specs and analysis from its admirers and students, but instead, I came away riveted by the journey the film takes us on in a way I’d never been before. 

This strange, dialogue-free Faces of Death odyssey, when coupled with the film’s many special features and a sometimes jaw-dropping restoration, is enough to reinvigorate this icon of cult cinema in ways that even its reboot could not. It’s a gem for cult horror fans, and even if you think you’ve seen it all, Vinegar Syndrome’s release proves there’s still more to see. 

Faces of Death 4K UHD  is now available from Vinegar Syndrome as a website exclusive before releasing wide on May 26.