THE ARTIFICE GIRL

 

Publicity poster for The Artifice Girl (© Franklin Ritch/Paper Street Pictures/Last Resort Ideas/Blood Oath/Tiberius Films/Jack Rabbit Media/XYZ Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

This afternoon, I watched an extraordinary science fiction movie entitled The Artifice Girl.

Directed and written by Franklin Ritch, who also plays its lead human character, and released in 2022 by XYZ Films, The Artifice Girl is all about an incredibly advanced and ultra-realistic yet nonetheless a wholly virtual CGI girl created and named Cherry by troubled computer genius & anonymous online vigilante Gareth (Franklin Ritch, and with Lance Henriksen playing him as an old man) to use as bait (hence this movie's title) for ensnaring vile child predators lurking on social media.

Moreover, once he successfully confirms during interrogation that he himself is not an abuser, by revealing to them the existence of Cherry and her astonishing capabilities, Garth is thereafter assisted in his heroic endeavours by two top-secret American government investigative agents, Deena (Sinda Nichols) and Amos (David Girard).

However, Cherry swiftly and unexpectedly evolves into a super-intelligent, sentient, independent AI entity with a mind and ambitions of her own, which complicates matters very profoundly. So too does Gareth's intensely personal and tragic secret motive that perpetually haunts him and drives him on unceasingly in his determined quest to expose as many paedophiles as possible for the authorities to arrest and imprison.

The film is split into three separate segments, each successive one focusing upon a different, ever more advanced stage in Cherry's development and evolution from sophisticated computer program to self-aware AI being to eventual cyborg.

Although filmed entirely in just a handful of small, sparse sets, The Artifice Girl is absolutely engrossing and fascinating throughout its 93-minute running time. This is due in no small way to the extremely thought-provoking scientific and associated moral issues discussed at length in the gripping, brilliantly-scripted dialogue ricocheting back and forth between the four principal characters, in which not a single word is superfluous.

In addition, young actress Tatum Matthews is truly spellbinding as Cherry (she apparently learned how to talk robotically for this movie by studying the speech patterns of Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa). For even though she is seen merely as a disembodied on-screen talking face for almost the entire movie (only in the final section has Cherry ultimately acquired a physical cyborg body), she always totally dominates the viewer's attention – a major acting career awaits, surely. Incidentally, please rest assured, there is absolutely NO visual representation of any kind of abuse in this film, and only some plot-essential but wholly non-descriptive references within the characters' dialogue.

The Artifice Girl premiered on 23 July 2022, in Canada, at Montreal's 26^th Annual Fantasia International Film Festival, where it won the coveted Gold Audience Award for Best International Feature, but it only received a very limited USA release, in just a few select cinemas, on 1 May 2023. Following this, it has only been available in Video On Demand format, which is a crying shame, as this riveting but little-known, hidden gem of a feature so deserves to be brought to the attention of a much wider audience – hence my reason for reviewing it here on my Shuker In MovieLand blog.

Happily, I was able to watch this film today on Daily Motion's website, and in just three days' time, on Tuesday 22 April 2025, it will be broadcast on British TV, at 9.00 pm on the terrestrial TV channel Film4 (indeed, it was seeing a mention of its upcoming Film4 screening in this weekend's TV guide for next week that brought the movie to my attention, as I'd never previously heard of it). So if you live in the UK, you can view it on there next Tuesday.

But wherever you're based, if you'd like to watch The Artifice Girl online, and free of charge too, please click here to do so on Daily Motion.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT

 

My UK DVD of Colossus: The Forbin Project (© Joseph Sargent/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Bearing in mind the alarming advancement and infiltration of AI (Artificial Intelligence) into every aspect of human life nowadays, my movie watch on 6 September 2023 was a valuable reminder of what may lie ahead for us all if we're not careful. Released way back in 1970, but chillingly prescient today, the science fiction film in question was Colossus: The Forbin Project.

Directed by Joseph Sargent, released by Universal Pictures, and based upon the 1966 sci fi novel Colossus written by Dennis Feltham Jones, Colossus: The Forbin Project proffers a grim cautionary tale that tells of how a genuinely colossal supercomputer dubbed Colossus has been created by the USA under the auspices of brilliant computer scientist Dr Charles A. Forbin (played by Eric Braeden) to act as an unconquerable protector and defender of the USA and in sole charge now of the latter's nuclear arsenal.

When finally activated fully, however, its first announcement is that it has detected a second such supercomputer, located in what was then the Soviet Union or USSR. Named Guardian, it has been created by scientists in the USSR to perform the same functions there as Colossus in the USA, However, the two supercomputers swiftly begin communicating with each other, via immense speed and complexity of mathematics-based language, and when their human masters attempt to stop them doing so, they each respond by firing a nuclear missile at each other's country as a threat to what they can and will do if thwarted in their intention to sync with one another.

Accordingly, their desired union is soon accomplished without any further interference from the scientists in their two respective countries, Colossus and Guardian thereby becoming a single all-powerful mega-supercomputer with near-infinite knowledge, but displaying wholly clinical, emotionless disinterest about killing countless people whenever its demands are not met. Suddenly, it has become the Earth's supreme, unstoppable Overlord, still dedicated to wiping out war as per its original instructions, but with the enslavement of all humanity as its means of doing so.

Colossus: The Forbin Project is a thrilling watch throughout, racking up the tension and portraying vividly the almost tangible, ever-increasing despair and fear of the scientists striving desperately but ever vainly to regain control of their monstrous, Frankensteinian creation. Their futile attempts are monitored frantically but impotently by both the American President (Gordon Pinsent) and his Soviet counterpart the USSR Secretary (Leonid Rostoff). Forbin, meanwhile, is held captive under continuous, 24-hour surveillance by his sentient but psychotic supercomputer nemesis, forced by it to perform tasks to increase even further its global control of the planet. Can humanity ever overthrow their seemingly omnipotent, omniscient AI Overlord? Watch this shocking, suspenseful movie and find out for yourself!

Worth noting here is that the supercomputer's name, Colossus, as given to it by Dennis Feltham Jones in his original eponymous novel upon which this movie is based, is derived from the computer that was central to the crucial Allied code-breaking work being undertaken during World War II at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, England. Jones was a Royal Navy commander at that time, but also worked with computers, and knew of Colossus at Bletchley Park.

Incidentally, Jones's novel Colossus was actually the first in a trilogy – the two that followed it (written by him as a result of the movie version of the first one being so successful) were The Fall of Colossus, published in 1974, and Colossus and the Crab, published in 1977. Jones passed away just four years later, in 1981. A major plot strand in the second novel was utilized within the plot of the movie version of the first novel. Namely, the attempt by scientists to disable Colossus by feeding it too much data for it to be able to assimilate everything coherently, in the hope that this would shut it down – no such storyline appears in the first novel.

Also of interest is that among the actors considered but ultimately rejected for the role of this movie's principal character, Dr Forbin, were Charlton Heston and Gregory Peck, with producer Stanley Chase preferring to use a less familiar actor, possibly to ensure that their own personality would not overshadow that of the lead character, as might have happened if someone as famous and familiar to moviegoers as Heston or Peck had played Forbin. Instead, Chase selected the then little-known German actor Hans-Jörg Gudegast, who duly changed his stage name to a more American-sounding one, Eric Braeden, and which he retained for all of his on-screen work thereafter.

Colossus: The Forbin Project is famous for having wielded notable influence within the movie industry. For example, director James Cameron was inspired by it when producing his screenplay for the 1984 blockbuster AI/robot-themed movie The Terminator; and newly-contracted Steven Spielberg was on set at Universal almost the whole time during the former movie's filming, watching how it progressed. Also, the segment from Colossus: The Forbin Project showing the original activation of Colossus was subsequently reused by Universal in their own later movie Cyborg: The Six Million Dollar Man.

Moreover, such was this movie's appeal and perceived significance that in 2007 plans for an official remake were announced by Imagine Entertainment and Universal Studios, to be directed by Ron Howard. In it, the storyline would be updated to incorporate the very considerable real-life scientific (and cinematic) advances that had occurred since the original movie's release in 1970. To date, however, there is still no sign of such a film actually going into production.

If you'd like to watch an official trailer for Colossus: The Forbin Project on YouTube, be sure to click here; or click here if you'd like to watch the entire movie free of charge on Internet Archive.

 

Publicity poster for Colossus: The Forbin Project (© Joseph Sargent/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)