Faceless After Dark (2023)

Opening with the final product Faceless After Dark released in 2023 starring Jenna Kanell as Bowie, a B-horror movie actress who has just broken into the industry. While the Faceless After Dark movie itself is not the biggest blockbuster of horror films it has more care and reverence for the subject matter it covers than the fake movie in the film. Faceless After Dark follows Bowie as she grapples with building parasocial expectations from the movie’s fan base and feeling like she has pigeon holed herself by taking the role. Directed by Raymond Wood, who also directed the comedy series Jenna Misconstrues Everything which also stars Kanell. Todd Jacobs and Kanell wrote Faceless After Dark which isn’t rated and commonly referred to as a Thriller movie which I disagree with due to the various horror elements and focus on horror community. Faceless After Dark can be watched now on PlutoTv On Demand for free by clicking here.

Spoilers for Faceless After Dark (2023) past this point

From rip horror is a key part of the movie as Bowie’s first role is as a final girl facing off with a killer clown that she is able to defeat as she delivers her line, “The circus just left town, bitch.” She’s less than pleased about it, even interrupting the scene to confirm that the line is what the director wants her to say but they inform her it likely won’t make the cut and she does it. The scene on set of her movie cuts to Bowie at a convention, Slasher Con, while she’s taking a video with a fan, reciting that very line. He asks if she has anything coming soon and when she gives a less than inspiring answer he encourages her to stay positive, revealing the bleak outlook of her career at the point in time the movie opens. Through a conversation on the phone as she’s leaving it’s revealed that Bowie chose an Indie horror project over a national bank ad campaign due to the bank having a history similar to that of Wells Fargo.

Despite not getting an appearance fee for Slasher Con like her male counterparts or a cut of merch sales Bowie completes the convention while downing pills. While in the parking garage after the con a dark figure is clearly following her but not seeing him she leaves with him tailing not far behind, going directly back to her girlfriend’s house where she stays. From the 2nd scene in the film it is clear that the women, including Bowie, are more than over the things that come with their careers online like unsolicited comments on their appearance. Jessica, her girlfriend portrayed by Danielle Lyn, gets a call that she got a big role and is off to London after the former lead was fired for an offensive post. Her girlfriend is recognizable but doesn’t claim her publicly, Bowie relegated to taking photos of her and her fans rather than having her own fans outside of the horror world.

Bowie gets an email for an audition as Jessica leaves for her role, now throwing herself into that process with the help of her friend, Ryan portrayed by Danny Kang. She shows Ryan another DM that she has received from a government official which is explicit and very inappropriate to his shock. She seems more than used to the unwarranted, often negative or sexual attention, commenting that her veganism draws ire from people. Ryan reveals that the project he’d been working on is going with a different actress than her and he retorts that she should be happy for him despite her feelings about male privilege, nepotism in the industry, and the lack of meritocracy. Their back and forth causes Ryan to decide to leave and Bowie admits her feelings center around not understanding why she isn’t enough for Hollywood. Ryan suggests she’s in a lull and that she should make her own things while in that period, agreeing to help her with her own film once his is done.

Bowie spends the night watching old footage that appears to be her and Ryan as younger teens. She starts to try and work on her own script for a film but quickly gives up and opts for smoking while she makes Cameo-like videos for fans. She keeps receiving calls from a blocked number and feels inundated with the negative news from around the world coupled with hateful DMs and comments on her social media. Despite her efforts she’s unable to focus on her career and decides to get wasted while doing autographs and dancing around the living room. She smashes a framed review of her movie and burns it outside in her grill, looking at the low rating as it burns to a crisp and drinking to pass out. When she awakens her life takes a very unexpected turn as a clown mask wearing assailant, presumably the man who followed her home, breaks in with a machete. As he walks through the house he observes the remnants of Bowie’s night while she makes faces at herself in the bathroom mirror and hops into bed.

Before she’s able to pass out however she goes to find her phone downstairs and discovers it outside with a plethora of alerts from her security camera system. Her system also captured the masked man coming into the house and once she sees this she attempts to calmly exit but is attacked by the man. Able to defend herself she escapes upstairs and locks herself in her bedroom and attempts to get one of her old devices to turn on so she can call for help. She finds her machete under the bed where she’d placed it earlier and makes her way towards the main area of the house. The man tries to attack her when she goes for her keys but she head buts him and slashes his arm which immediately turns him into a little bitch. He whimpers and claims to have no intention to hurt her but rather is a mentally ill man who wanted to play out a fantasy. He hands her her phone back but she chops his shin and then slices his neck after he calls her a bitch.

The man dies on her rug and she’s left covered in his blood splatter while still in shock about the whole scenario. Before she can decide what to do however someone knocks on her front door, an Atlanta police officer checking in on her. She covers herself with a blanket and goes to open the door, not admitting to the officer what happened or the dead body in her living room. This decision kicks off Bowie’s descent into madness as she decides that her next project will be murdering her parasocial fans on camera, the first kill caught on her security system. Following her killing the intruder she gets another call from an unknown number and this time answers it and invites the person over. He shows up with a clown mask and assumes she’s just freaky and into the kink of it all, Bowie calling him out for being shy despite calling her twice a week.

Following her into a dark room with neon paint on the walls, strobe lights flashing, and loud metal music playing he is ambushed and knocked out. When he awakens Bowie has tied him to a chair and placed a camera in his face, filming what she’s doing to him. She’s giggly and amused, allowing him to believe it is all part of some kink game but her demeanor changes when she reveals she is tired of him and people like him getting away with being cretans. Bowie also reveals she went through his DMs and has seen he messages young girls, him protesting it was a mistake but Bowie confirming it was a frequent choice. She plays along at first but is clearly sarcastic and then stabs him through the shoe, slicing his foot. She tells him to smile for the camera, commenting he’s prettier when he smiles and proceeds to slice off a portion of his hand.

Now that Bowie has developed her method of murder and how she plans to create her masterpiece she then invites over a conservative, older married man. She kills him after playing cat and mouse with him over dinner where she’s actually drugged the wine he’s drinking so she’s easily able to tie him up. Bowie’s mental state is clearly declining throughout the murders, becoming infatuated with the gore and blood of her kills. After killing both men she resolves to have a 3rd and final act which she chooses to be a female social media user who attacks women online. Another conservative woman this lady ends up having a pink gun in her purse that she attempts to use to stop Bowie. Unfortunately for her this only inspires Bowie to go harder, emptying the gun into the ceiling and ultimately tying the woman to a chair after knocking her out. She films herself setting the woman on fire and burning her alive, leaving her a crisp tied to a chair in the garage.

During the face off with the woman she is stabbed in the abdomen just below her ribs and begins to bleed profusely. This doesn’t stop her however and she edits all of the footage from her murders into a video that she then uploads to the internet, a snuff film with meaning is the vibe. This is her masterpiece and she dons the blood, charred skin, and rotting flesh for clown makeup and dresses up awaiting the police. She films herself breaking down once she’s in full gear which is the same shot from the opening of the movie. The police discover the bodies throughout the house after they arrest and take away Bowie from the scene. Left on each body is a performance release contract, as if the victims had consented to be part of her film and therefore can be legally filmed being murdered. An officer vomits after he discovers the conservative man dead and tied to a bed with his own severed penis in his mouth, something implied earlier in the movie but not shown or confirmed.

Jessica is seen having starred in a movie called Blood Monsoon at the end of the film, her role as Bowie being questioned by the interviewer. She claims to have wanted to bring care to the portrayal and also that she was close with Bowie and recognized that she struggled with her mental health. Ryan is the one filming this interview, part of the movie and promo for the project as Jessica wants to move on to a different topic. A voiceover reveals that the case has sparked true crime podcast coverage and the series that Jessica will star in. Some of the voiceover comments indicate that people have sympathy for Bowie while others state that she had no reason to hate her life or crack. Bowie is in a psychiatric hospital and the last line of the film is, “What’s next?” from a voiceover covering the case and upcoming film. The blonde woman from earlier in the film that also struggled with the online hate is listening to a bro podcast discuss that Bowie signed up for it and had no right. She looks to a knife in the room then to the camera and gives a cheeky grin like she plans to pick up where Bowie left off.

Conclusion

Maybe pre-pandemic I would’ve thought this concept a bit more far fetched but once we all became hopelessly plugged in and the stakes have gotten higher for online figures it doesn’t seem unlikely that one could be pushed past the edge. In Bowie’s defense the initial kill takes place because a man breaks into her home presumably to kill her which is coupled with her choosing the absolute worst to murder (a pedophile, a misogynist, and whatever the soccer mom wants to call herself). Just this week alone an internet story has gone viral enough to cause serious conversations about what should and shouldn’t be allowed on the internet as a woman has shared her obsession with her psychiatrist with the world. The internet has cultivated a space where good and bad are sometimes reversed and moral compasses spin like Jack Sparrow’s in Pirates of the Caribbean. While hating on people online can give a dopamine release for many there are consequences on the other side of the screen we often aren’t privy to until it is too late.

Bowie walks a fine line between sanity and insanity even before she’s attacked but the attack sparks inspiration in her that she channels into her heinous crimes. While it is hard to feel bad for the characters she murders ultimately she is doing a bad thing by brutally killing these people and that can’t be brushed aside. I do appreciate that she isn’t painted as a saint but rather a very disturbed young woman who has decided to channel her disturbance into what she considers performance art. In the end her friends take advantage of the situation to further their individual careers with little regard for her which is another feature of the industry she was in. The entertainment industry coupled with modern social media is a hellscape for those struggling with mental health issues like the character Bowie was. I found Kanell to be wholly interesting and I felt sad that following her escapades was coming to a close despite them being rather gruesome. She was able to carry scene after scene often as the only actress shown and the plot didn’t feel that it drug on too long or left out key details that would make her actions make sense.