What Does JT Petty Have In Store For Faces Of Death?

I think it's fairly likely you've seen one of the Faces of Death series, that motley bunch of faux documentaries in the Mondo Movie style, mostly made up of faked footage of hacked off limbs, executions and monkey-brain eating - with just a sprinkling of real life imagery thrown in for good measure. Almost as likely is that you wouldn't want to see it again. As has been widely reported this week, Rogue pictures are now rebooting the franchise with a narrative feature film, to be written and directed by JT Petty.

Petty seems like the ideal man for the job - not least because his recent S&man is itself a faux doc with an unhealthy dose of grue. Hostel has thrown down the gauntlet for wide-release gore, and Hostel 2 is going to push the envelope further - so are we to expect Petty to pick up the gauntlet and go for broke with the body bits and rivers of blood?

He told me "I shouldn't say too much yet, but it's going to be a narrative film, very hard, very strange. I think the property is actually a great canvas for a very frightening film, not just splatter. "

Sounds good. But what kind of plot are we looking at? Some reports have the lead characters all being teens, as per the Final Destination films, while others have Francis B. Gross, a 'character' from the original series, upfront. All Petty could say to me on the subject was "With such a non-narrative source I'm not really limited in story at all."

So, I guess, it seems that we don't really know for sure just yet.

Rogue see this relaunched Faces as their version of the Saw franchise; comparing Petty's Soft For Digging and Mimic: Sentinel to the Saw films, I actually expect it's going to be something significantly better.