Dacre Montgomery he’s not shy about using his struggles to bring the characters to life. In ‘Faces of Death’, his latest horror film, he gets personal, explaining how living with obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, informed every move and moment of the villainous Arthur in his new project. According to the ‘Stranger Things’ actor, the role pushed him into one of his darker performances, but instead of hiding what makes him tick, Dacre brought it out straight.
The revelation of Dacre Montgomery
Most people know Montgomery as Billy from ‘Stranger Things’, but his new film, ‘Faces of Death’, is a different animal. In it, he plays Arthur, a masked killer who obsessively recreates moments from the infamous 1978 film, uploading gruesome clips for the world to see. It is in front of him Barbie Ferreira (yes, fromeuphoria‘) decided to stop him playing a content moderator. But beneath the blood and spectacle, there’s something uncomfortable about Arthur, an obsession with ritual and control, that feels alive.Montgomery told the crowd that what made Arthur feel unsafe near home was his OCD. “That’s definitely my thing. I live with it, and I manage,” he said, not dancing around reality. For the actor, those old and familiar compulsions: the need for order, the fixation on detail, all of that became a strange sort of bridge for the character.He always brought a sharp energy to his roles, but Arthur demanded more. Every action was calculated, every scene tightly wound. “From what you see in the movie, he’s halfway through executing his plan, and he’s put a lot of thought into it,” Montgomery said. He joked that he couldn’t relate to the murder, but the meticulous attention to detail? That was all.the director Daniel GoldhaberIsa Mazzei, who co-wrote the film, said Montgomery’s quirks shaped Arthur deeply. Goldhaber remembers meeting other actors for the part, but none of them felt right. “Everybody else … approached this character as someone else, as something they’d seen in the media. Dacre came in, and it was, ‘Here are all the ways you can personally relate to Arthur.'” Suddenly, the character wasn’t a generic psychopath; it had texture, strange habits and raw edges.One detail that stuck with Goldhaber was Montgomery’s obsession with felt fabric, a quirk of his real life. During filming, Montgomery told her that she spent ten years sleeping alone on the bed because the slightest wrinkle in the sheets could keep her up all night. That became Arthur’s fixation with latex and skin, the way he danced and moved while wearing them, elements that weren’t even in the original script, but became central to the character’s unsettling presence. Even the suggestion that wearing latex brings Arthur something close to satisfaction, rather than the act of dying, oddly enough, came from the sensation itself, from their collaboration.For Montgomery, this wasn’t just a performance. It was a personal exorcism, the anxiety and compulsions he hides in everyday life pouring directly into Arthur’s ritualized and chilling actions. The result is a villain that isn’t scary, but is disturbingly real.
More on Dacre Montgomery and “Faces of Death”.
Born in Australia, Montgomery began his career with roles in films such as ‘Power Rangers’, where he played the Red Ranger. He later appeared in projects like ‘Elvis’ where he portrayed music producer Steve Binder.However, after a while, Montgomery drifted away from Hollywood, which helped him land roles that meant something to him. ‘Faces of Death’ is exactly that: a bold reinvention of the 1978 cult classic, this time set in the digital age. The film follows a content moderator who encounters a network of people uploading new versions of the film’s violent acts. Montgomery’s Arthur is a masked figure who turns terror into performance art, a killer whose obsession is as much to be seen as to feel.‘Faces of Death’, which also stars Charli XCX, Josie Totah, Aaron Holliday and Jermaine Fowler, is in theaters now.
