Artifacts

(2007) Artifacts HORROR/ SUPERNATURAL THRILLER

Produced, written and directed by Giles Daoust and Emmanuel Jespers, that has average teen, Kate (Mary Stockley) starting to have the ability to see horrifying mirror images of death, occurring to people she knows before she herself becomes targeted.

Another fascinating very mature low budget horror film with some unusual twists. Perhaps inspired from the likes of "Invasion of the Body Snatcher", "The Matrix", "The Cemetary Man", "The 13th Floor" to name a few. The movie is more interesting than it is scary, and with a much bigger budget, who knows how much accolades it would have had.

Some movies are bad because of the acting, the budget, the camera-work or other such things. Those movies, you detect easily and either don't pick them up at all or at least stop watching them and wasting your time. "Artifacts" is much, much worse than that.

Clearly, it's a low-budget movie, but it's actually well made. The acting is decent too, as is the soundtrack. So it lures you into thinking it might, actually, be a decent movie. Don't be fooled.

Because, you see, "Artifacts" didn't run out of budget at the end, it simply ran out of plot. You never find out anything about the doppelgangers, the artifacts, the foreshadowed "Carl Francken"... it all just goes completely unexplained. None of it makes any sense. At all. And they can't even play the "it's about the characters, not the plot" card, because it's blatantly a plot-driven movie... without a plot.

Frankly, I find this kind of movie an insult to the viewers.

Maybe it's because I'm Belgian, but I actually really liked this film.

So the film doesn't have a well-developed storyline, but those who really bother about that don't seem to get the point of this film. All this film attempts to do, is to create a totally paranoid atmosphere for an hour and fifteen minutes... It attempts to do so mostly by focusing on the emotions of pretty regular young people, creative camera angles and a creepy soundtrack. In my opinion they most definitely succeeded. It might have helped that I smoked a joint on forehand, but I really felt on the edge throughout the film.

After coming to the realisation that the film was shot on a very limited budget and in a very limited time frame, I was really impressed.

The movie's only an hour and fifteen minutes long, and a portion of that's taken up by the end credits, so it's very short. The end credits mention something about a Belgian Tax Shelter, which may explain this movie's existence.

The DVD cover, incidentally, has nothing to do with the film.

It did actually hold my interest up to the "ending." People are being killed by their doppelgangers, who appear accompanied by odd static. The police find metal "artifacts" in their bodies. There's an amusing web search at one point where the heroine searches for "artefact in bodies" or something like that. That would bring up a lot more results than she gets, and she actually finds more or less what she was looking for.

But anyway, in the end the artefacts and the doppelgangers are not explained. Nor is the non-explanation satisfactory in any way. I might have given the movie a 6/10 or 7/10 if it sustained the interest with the ending, but the failure to have a resolution really damaged it for me.

The special feature indicates this was shot in 12 days for $100,000 with a cast of 10 and 20 locations. It sounded like they originally wanted the actors to work off the synopsis rather than use a script. For a movie on a limited budget with a limited shooting schedule, that's a real mistake. The dialogue and acting in the film is actually fine, it's the plot where the film falls flat at the end, with no wrapup. I'm not really sure where the $100,000 went. Maybe just towards paying the cast and crew? They do blow up a car....

The special feature does offer a very little additional information about two of the characters that one could not possibly get from the film. However, the director either really did not have an explanation, or plays coy. Supposedly, budgetary restrictions kept them from offering a real ending. They're open to the possibility of a sequel or a remake. I'm doubtful whether they'll get that opportunity.

I rented this from Blockbuster through the mail, since my local store does not carry it. I rented it despite the low ratings here on IMDb, mainly after seeing the trailer for the movie.

This was not a bad film at all! In fact, I rather liked it. The story was interesting. There was plenty of suspense, and just enough gore. Sure, they might not have ended it so abruptly, but all the questions this movie leaves me with gives me something to think about. There is a lot left to the viewer's interpretation.

I enjoyed it, and recommend the movie to you. It won't win any awards, perhaps, but it is worth watching.