The Artifice Girl

The Artifice Girl is a timely and will be a timeless film that explores aritificial intelligence and sentience.

The Artifice Girl opens with two agents, Amos (David Girard) and Deena (Sinda Nichols), of a non-governmental organization who is tasked with capturing child predators. As the film opens, they are interrogating Gareth (portrayed by the director, Franklin Ritch) about a young girl named Cherry (Tatum Matthews). That’s about as much as I can write before spoiling things – if you haven’t see the trailer, don’t watch it.

The Artifice Girl is a slow and well-paced engaging sci-fi movie lacks most sci-fi staples such as space, action scenes and aliens.

With The Artifice Girl, Franklin Ritch shows that he is a multitalented creative able to direct, write and edit. The blocking and cuts during the conversations are very well done especially the opening discussion between the agents and Gareth. This movie as a whole is reminicent of early David Fincher films in the way scenes are setup and how the movie looks. Ritch was able to keep my attention glued to the screen through sharp editing and dialogue that does not feel like it’s just characters talking – and the thing is, this movie is all about characters talking to each other.

The cinematography by Britt McTammany is beautifully sterile.

Great performance by Tatum Matthews as Cherry. Matthews rises above everyone else in the film and she carries the movie as she adapts to her chracter throughout the three acts which are 30-minutes each. Lance Henriksen shows up in the movie and adds a lot to the film, I wish I could write more about Henriksen’s part in the movie.

The Artifice Girl is a though-provoking film about the ethics of AI and how we as a society will deal this techology as it moves from sci-fi and into reality. This film will be something I’ll be thinking about for a while.

“Human nature is not something I aspire to.”

Streamed on Hoopla.