Anthology films are often hit or miss in story style and content. People pick their favorite segments seldom having the whole film in mind. Little or non-existent budget films can use different styles of directing, acting and story. The downfall of most is inconsistency not in the fact of lack of money but in simply the process. Watching a new anthology film by the one person who just does about everything Rusty Apper’s three-story part Artifacts Of Fear (2023) is an example of style over substance.
Filmed in Liverpool and other areas in the UK, which I picked up from some slight scouser accents and my time following a certain football club that wears red, I found Artifacts Of Fear a wonderful seventy-five-minute tight terror experience. The trouble is the actual film is a huge one hundred and ten minutes long caused by some poor choices in directing and editing that mar sometimes committed actors on screen. Plot holes, and several continuity errors on screen in editing that cause one to go okay how did that happen?
The stories all have inspiration in work like From Beyond The Grave (1974), The Screaming Skull (1958) and many others with a framing story of two young men seeking an item for a Halloween party they plan to host. Laurence R. Harvey who is the best part of the film takes a turn as a creepy curio shop dealer Mr. Kosminski who leads the ill-fated lads to a special item he has in his basement. The device with a skull and menacing dialogue by Paul Kelleher, demands silver for a story which launches the rest of the film.
The first one, a young policewoman is terrorized by a masked serial killer who has been terrorizing the city. She is working on the case with lots of running, looking scared, anguished screams in one generic look at what a slasher film is with an ending. Way too many shots of bits of furniture, feet running etc. all to pad it out creating a glacial pace. Moments of real terror are lost such as when the young girl is leaning against her doors with the maniac outside. What a moment for silence, a wary look at the door followed by a thunderous knock. The saving grace of this first story is the rather frightening video footage that the policewoman must watch of a murder victim as part of the evidence and her investigation. The best shot is the horrible sounds of mutilation on camera followed by the crazed killer revealing himself as an old man in a blood-stained apron. The blank passive expression in the camera is a priceless moment of cold-hearted dread.
Artifacts Of Fear just shrieks to be edited down. The number of shots used particularly in moments from other stories such as the final segment when we see three angles of a person smoking a cigarette cut to music. In that same last segment, there are glaring continuity troubles when the character is watching fireworks outside at night. Cut to a shot of eyeglasses with no reflection of the fireworks in them. The same character is drinking from a flask in his hand that magically disappears in the next moment. In many of the other stories, useless reparative shots are used to pad out stories or segment length that make one go why why why why and did I say why? Editing moments of a music instrumental music track when music is used to accent dread does not make one tap one hand or make it into a music video.
The film has some practical blood and some visual effects that one expects however it mares some committed acting performances, particularly from the already mentioned Laurence R. Harvey, one of the brothers in the third story Ted played by Carl Wharton, and the two young guys who have their moment in the wrap-around segment Luke Morgan as Alex and Cameron Patmore as Nathon.
Often indie horror films are a training ground for people to learn their craft. The object of appraising a film of this nature is not to destroy or to belittle effort as some do but to be honest as a horror film and a film for public consumption. Artifacts Of Fear (2023) had potential however it looks cobbled together under the guise of character development coupled with a pace that kills, lots of shots of people turning heads in various directions and many views of the same things that will make you scream at the screen, and not in a good way.
BayView Entertainment have released ARTIFACTS OF FEAR on VOD including Tubi and Amazon Prime Video
