In Faces of Death, a serial killer reenacts violent scenes from the 1978 pseudo-documentary of the same name, then posts the videos on a TikTok-like app for social media clout. But while this new slasher takes its inspiration from that infamous VHS tape, the actor, whose character terrorizes a content moderator played by Barbie Ferreira, was inspired by a very different, but equally bizarre, scary movie.
Best known for his portrayal of Hawking High School bully Billy Hargrove in Stranger Things, Australian actor Dacre Montgomery plays the murderous Arthur in Faces of Death. It’s a nuanced performance as Arthur oscillates between a mild-mannered nerd to gain entry into his victims’ homes and an unhinged killer fueled by his parasocial followers. So to develop this mysterious antagonist, Montgomery tells Polygon he turned to a mysterious movie: Be My Cat, a Film for Anne.
Written, directed, and starring Adrian Tofei, this unrated found-footage thriller follows a Romanian filmmaker who becomes obsessed with casting the actress Anne Hathaway in his movie, ultimately going to extreme lengths in that pursuit.
“It’s literally the most disturbing thing ever,” Montgomery says, “because you cannot figure out whether this Romanian filmmaker is a real filmmaker or just a perverted human.”
Be My Cat played at a handful of genre and horror-focused film festivals in 2015 before getting a limited DVD release and ultimately winding up online thanks to distributor Terror Films. (It’s free now on Roku, Sling TV, and Fandango, and also streaming on Prime Video.)
“Somehow this got a release,” Montgomery says. “It’s so bizarre. I watched it before we made the film, and I was like, I have to study this guy for Arthur, because he’s so obsessed with getting attention through making a film.”
While Montgomery based the role on a semi-fictional character (and also took some inspiration from real-life mass murderer Elliot Rodger), the film’s director, Daniel Goldhaber, reveals that one aspect of the character was based on the actor himself.
“One of the things that Dacre told me in our first meeting was that he has an obsession with textures,” Goldhaber recalls. “For 10 years of his life, he was unable to sleep under the bedsheets because if there was a crease in the bedsheet, it would keep him awake all night. So he slept on top of the sheets.”
When they met, the director recalls Montgomery telling him, “I think I should play Arthur, because I have severe OCD, and I think Arthur does too, and I think that there’s a way for me to see into this guy through that OCD that I have myself.”
Goldhaber and his co-writer/producer Isa Mazzei incorporated those details into Arthur’s character, giving him a “textural obsession” that extends to the off-putting bodysuits and masks he wears throughout the movie.
“It became a big part of the iconography of the character,” Goldhaber says. “That’s how I work with performers. I like to see how they find themselves in the character.”
Faces of Death releases in theaters on April 10.
