CULT HERO OF THE MONTH LANCE HENRIKSEN
Writer-director Franklin Ritch’s The Artifice Girl — in which he also plays a major role for two-thirds of the runtime — is a thoughtful, affecting science-fiction film which explores new-ish ideas about artificial intelligence. It’s an interior piece on the model of a three-act play, set over the lifetime of animator/inventor Gareth (Ritch) — whose CV includes making the digital ghost of Alec Guinness for a Star Wars show — and following the mental and technical evolution of Cherry (Tatum Matthews), an entirely simulated online persona designed to entrap paedophiles for the FBI. In a disturbing, credible variation on the Frankenstein theme, this ‘monster’ is designed to interact with the worst people imaginable but evolves in unexpected ways. Matthews is startling — we’ve spent a lot of time wondering whether CGI could replace actors, but without technical tweaking she gives an acting performance that replaces CGI.