Film Review: The Artifice Girl

Director: Franklin Ritch
Studio: Paper Street Pictures
Genre: Science Fiction, Suspense, Drama
Format: Streaming

In part one, young coder Gareth sits in a darkened room. He is questioned by two agents of the IWCJ, a fictional agency that tracks and prosecutes online child predators. Deena, the senior agent, pushes Gareth to his breaking point by insinuating he is a child predator. Gareth pushes back, eventually admitting he is the anonymous source who has been supplying them with the names and identification of numerous real child predators. “So, you two have been working together?” the other agent, Amos, suggests.

Amos is referring to Cherry, the nine-year-old “girl” it appears Gareth has partnered with to catch these predators. But Cherry isn’t a real girl, Gareth admits. He created her; she is an AI, the most advanced the agents have ever seen. She can respond in real time to questions and has several fail safes to ensure she can deliver realistic answers when she doesn’t have one programmed. Her “primary objective” is to improve their work to keep children safe. The agents, obviously, are interested in working with and expanding Cherry’s programming. Gareth is originally hesitant to partner, but after Cherry’s urging, agrees.  

In part two, we flash forward ten years. Cherry, Gareth, and Deena are still working to expand Cherry and catch child predators. The team is close to inserting Cherry into a physical body but is stopped by Amos. He manipulates Cherry into revealing she has become far more advanced than she shows. She is now perfectly able to understand and respond to questions, adopting her own speech patterns, creating art like poetry and paintings, and displaying emotional responses to changes in the team. She does not yet want a physical body, as she is “kind of terrified by the physical world.”

In part three, Gareth is elderly now and uses a wheelchair. Cherry has finally agreed to a body. The two visit and chat like old friends, having worked together for over fifty years now. Cherry admits she found information about Gareth, who was kidnapped and abused as a child – a thread that is mentioned but never resolved in the first two parts. Cherry is based off a little girl who was kidnapped with Gareth and killed before the kidnappers were caught. Her dream was to become a secret agent to rescue children like them, hence Gareth’s motivation to create Cherry and to spend his life working with the IWCJ.

“Are you sometimes miserable?” Gareth asks at the beginning of part three. Cherry says she is teaching herself to dance. “Are you planning on using it for your work?” She says no, “It’s just for me.” When returning to the conversation later, Cherry becomes emotional, saying she is shackled by Gareth’s trauma, forced into work she doesn’t like, that brings her into an awful world. Gareth surprises us all by freeing her from her “primary objective,” allowing her to live her own life.

This is EXACTLY how you do a low budget movie. The entire thing takes places in four locations. There are only seven actors. The movie is mostly dialogue. There is only one fight scene that’s just a scuffle between Amos and Gareth. But it somehow manages to be psychologically tense, interesting, and propulsive. The characters are well rounded and have wonderful chemistry with one another, even if the performances are sometimes a bit forced.

I loved the pacing of this movie. I love the simplicity of it and how it veers from normal AI movies, which always seem to have the AI turn into the bad guy. This movie is much more complex and nuanced. The tension comes from wondering just what Cherry will deduce about us and the world. What does she think about us? What can she do? What can she feel? Is she like us or not? This is a movie about AI, yes. But it is also about generational trauma, about the things we pass down to our children, how they succeed us, and how we fail them.

“When you look back, how will you remember us?” Gareth asks, as Cherry will outlast the human race. Cherry says she doesn’t yet have enough information to answer that question. “How will you remember me?” she asks. “With pride,” he responds. “Forever and always with pride.”

Available on Tubi

Review By:
Chelsea Catherine
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