I've been looking forward to watching Artifacts of Fear for a while now, due to a busy schedule I haven't been able to fit it in. As I often say here, I do love anthology films, and this is the second one I have watched in recent weeks, with I Slay on Christmas being reviewed around this time last week. Written, edited, scored and directed by Rusty Apper (Hellbilly 58, Spirits of the Fall), the films contained within all suffer from similar pacing problems, but also all share a unified feel that made the anthology fit together better than ones that have segments directed and written by different people. An anthology always needs a good theme, here, the classic idea of having the shorts all set around Halloween is the one chosen, though that scary season is not the focus.
Alex (Luke Morgan) and Nathan (Cameron Patmore) are two teenage best friends who are planning a large Halloween party. Wanting something there that will scare the guests, they have decided to head to a little known antiques store on the edge of town, hoping to find something that will achieve their goal. Once there, they encounter the eccentric owner, Mr. Kosminski (Laurence R. Harvey - The Editor), after learning of the boys plan, he invites them down into his basement to see a recent acquisition of his. It is an old fashioned automated device in a glass case, much like the old fortune teller machines (such as seen in Big), this one instead has a radio in it, with an automated voice (Paul Kelleher - Alien: Isolation video game voice work) saying if a token is inserted then it will tell them a spooky story. Mr. Kosminski gives them some tokens to try it out, with the stories told being the shorts, with the antique visit of course being the wraparound segment.
I always appreciate a good wraparound story, and this one was maybe the best of the stories to be found here. Rather than an excuse for the anthology to happen, this was a decent length in its own right, with it being fifteen minutes before the first of the shorts even begins. I thought Harvey was fantastic here, effortlessly stealing all the scenes he was in with his creepy performance. While the in-between bits were quite short, the wraparound gets a nice ten minute conclusion to it at the end of the film.
The stories contained here were not titled, which was a vague annoyance, but they were all thematically different from each other, even if they did follow similar paths. The first starred Isabella Moore Richardson as Jess, a young female detective who was in charge of investigating a twisted serial killer case. One night she finds herself chased by a man wearing a creepy clown mask (Michael Moore), she doesn't think much of it at the time, but while reviewing footage the killer had left for the police to find, while at her apartment, she is disturbed to see that same clown mask in the recording, and it isn't long before she realises the killer has discovered where she lives. At around twenty five minutes long, this one did unfortunately outstay its welcome somewhat. The whole second half of this had Jess slowly walking around her apartment suspecting she wasn't alone, and this section went on for far too long. I wish it had been edited down. The initial chase sequence at the start of the story strangely petered out, with Jess getting away off screen, with just a text to her boyfriend to explain how she did that. This felt a bit odd. So too did the ending, a decent finishing shot, but the apartment invasion just cuts away without a resolution being shown. Rather than gloss over this poor finish, the teens at the antiques store actually point out how underwhelming and abruptly the story finished, making me wonder why it was decided to end it the way it did, if even fictional characters are complaining about it. The found footage sections were the highlight of this first story, with blood effects looking great. Throughout all the shorts, the blood always did look effective on screen.
The second short (at thirty minutes long) was perhaps the worst, but it did start off well. The prologue is set in 1614, with a woman suspected of witchcraft being chased through woods. Before she is killed, she promises that her curse will live on. Fast forward to present day, and a woman living on a farm (Willow, played by Annmarie Hodson), has come into possession of the skull of this supposed witch. She is visited by Rick Loomis (Nathan Head - Harvest of the Dead: Halloween Night), a writer for a paranormal magazine who wishes to study this reportedly haunted skull. The twists and turns along the way were varied, with it bouncing backwards and forwards over whether the skull was actually a thing of evil, or if it is various characters themselves who are mentally unhinged and projecting their madness outwards. Again, this one seemed to drag at times, I did enjoy the art-house style sequence in the middle when it appears the skull is affecting Rick's mind, and I did enjoy the ending of this one.
The final short film was the most confusing to follow, but weirdly kept my interest for a lot of its run time. Dealing with Satanism and devil worship, I felt echoes of The Omen in certain scenes, especially towards the end. Here, Mike (Mark Porter) is tasked with clearing out his father's house after his passing. The man was never close to his dad, and during the cleaning is increasingly alarmed at all the Satanist paraphernalia that he discovers. Eventually, he finds a cassette tape, which has a sinister confession on it. Mike becomes determined to help his late father right his wrongs. While Mike is virtually the only character here, the actor keeps things together well. I loved some of the effects used, such as a photo of the dad that keeps altering, and one scene in which a chair is suddenly flung at Mike from off camera. I will admit to not quite understanding the overall story here.
While I did have complaints with each of the shorts, I still thought they linked together well. I loved the set design, and the amount of various Halloween and horror themed objects around the locations. It was also nice to have a decent wraparound story for a change, and I especially liked the score, with the same piece of music appearing in all the shorts, but never in a way that felt like the tune was outstaying its welcome. On occasion I even found myself humming along to it. With decent blood effects, and some twisted stories, this might not have set my world on fire, but it didn't feel especially bloated, even with a near two hour run time. Artifacts of Fear has been released on VOD including Amazon Prime via Bayview Entertainment.
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