Artifacts (DVD)
Steve Barton
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Reviewed by Uncle Creepy
Starring Mary Stockley, Felix Scott, Max Digby, Jason Morrell
Directed by Giles Daoust and Emmanuel Jespers
Distributed by Lionsgate Home Entertainment
Imagine if you will that one day you pick up the phone and on the other end of the line you hear a very familiar voice … your own. Shaken, you turn on your computer, and there sitting in front of you via webcam is yourself. Staring. Smiling. The thought alone is pretty friggin’ scary, and those are the scenarios you can expect to find riddled within Lionsgate’s newest release, Artifacts.
The film tells the story of Kate (Stockley), who finds herself on the run from, well, herself. It’s not just her though. It’s all of her friends, too. Each of them has his or her own murderous doppelganger to contend with. What do these other-selves want? And why is each corpse found with a small metal artifact tucked under its ribcage?
Truth be told, the story as a whole doesn’t make much sense, and considering that the movie only runs about seventy-five minutes, there’s not exactly a lot of time spent explaining things. I will say this though: Artifacts can be a very effective little movie. The acting is way better than you’d expect, and the direction of the duo of Giles Daoust and Emmanuel Jespers is more than spot on. There are moments of sheer brilliance throughout the film, but at the end of the day things start to lose a lot of steam once our protagonists start piecing together what’s going on. You can almost see the shark being jumped on screen. That’s a real shame, too, because had there been a solid plot in place, this would have easily rated a hell of a lot higher than it ended up.
In terms of DVD extras all we get is a featurette called 100k12D: The Guerilla Filmmaking of Artifacts, and the title is pretty much self explanatory in terms of content. Sadly it always seems that movies that would benefit from having a commentary never end up getting one. Why this is, is anyone’s guess, but one definitely would have helped here.
Artifacts is a sufficient little spooker that unfortunately will have you scratching your head far more than it will covering your eyes. It’s good for a quick watch but is ultimately pretty forgettable.
Special Features
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Special Features
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1 out of 5
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