Artefacts

I bought this DVD out of the blue, I wanted to be surprised. The movie focuses on a young woman named Kate who finds out all of her friends and co-workers are murdered by their doubles. At no point this is a mystery for her because the doubles make no effort of concealing themselves for prying security cams. While the police seemingly makes no effort of solving the case (?) Kate runs for her life and tries to save as many friends as she can. The style of photography is guerilla at best, which gives the movie a documentary-like feeling, especially in the rare action scenes. Unfortunately, because of the underground touch, it never accomplishes to be scary or intensive. Also, the writers have forgotten to include any and all explanations as to where the doubles are coming from, who made/grew them, who are controlling them and why, what are the artefacts for, etc? I like my fair share of mystery and mysticism, but there is a difference between letting the viewer decide what to make of it him/herself, and just leaving everything open. I have to say that I am impressed with the time schedule, because the documentary points out that three guys did all the work in a little over a month for only 100,000 dollars. I also have to say that the acting felt a little staged. Kate appears to express total anxiety as her neutral emotional state and you basically care little whether she lives or dies. Overall, it feels more like you are watching a filmschool project rather than an actual movie.

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.

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.

There is nothing good or enjoyable about this film. Shot somewhere in Belgium with American actors or Europeans trying to put on American accents (I heard slips here and there)this flick initially looked like it may have some potential. I'd say within the first 2 minutes I realized that I may have had a better time just taking my rental dollars and flushing them down the toilet. This movie was dumb, dumb dumb! Again, the actors (lol) took this script so seriously and try so hard to deliver academy award performances. Awkward dialog (of what little was said), terrible music sound track which was primarily made up of loud drum beats and electronically processed noise, all mixed together to bring you one of the worst and disappointing films made in years. Lots of running in between buildings and no horror scares at all. The ending of this film was probably one of the most self serving and poorly written I've seen in a while. Amateur film making at it's worst. I wonder if anyone at RedBox actually watched this movie. My advice to RedBox is too pick better movies!! Watch them first before you place it for rental in your vending machines. We can forgive BlockBuster since they have a huge selection and there's bound to be a bomb here and there but RedBox has a miniscule selection and should be more careful.

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.