![](http://www.syracusenewtimes.com/newyork/file-172-.jpg")
Fighting back from this hit list is Kate Warner (Mary Stockley), who
bonds with her slacker ex-boyfriend Mike (Felix Scott) to puzzle out
what’s going on. Oh yeah, the dead friends have something else in
common: a metallic artefact that lurks somewhere inside the chest
cavity, even though there are no physical scars to even suggest how the
whatzit got in there. (By the way, the title is apparently the Belgium
spelling, just like when the 1989 James Bond flick Licence to Kill
adhered to the British spellcheck, so don’t get all Vanna White on me.)
Auteurs Giles Daoust and Emmanuel Jespers, who wrote, produced and
directed this compact exercise in paranoia, posit some intriguing riffs
on the dependable Invasion of the Body Snatchers formula, right
down to the “One of us has to stay awake” gambit. Mirror images,
doppelgangers (some of the cast members get to double their acting
pleasure) and self-identity issues drive this sleek sci-fi entry, with
directors of photography Bernard Vervoort and Francis Schmitt capturing
an otherworldly ambiance from the austere Brussels backdrop. There is
ample time to digest Artefacts’ futuristic food for thought; the slow-moving end credits run a whopping eight minutes! Center for the Arts, Friday, May 2, 7:45 p.m.
bonds with her slacker ex-boyfriend Mike (Felix Scott) to puzzle out
what’s going on. Oh yeah, the dead friends have something else in
common: a metallic artefact that lurks somewhere inside the chest
cavity, even though there are no physical scars to even suggest how the
whatzit got in there. (By the way, the title is apparently the Belgium
spelling, just like when the 1989 James Bond flick Licence to Kill
adhered to the British spellcheck, so don’t get all Vanna White on me.)
Auteurs Giles Daoust and Emmanuel Jespers, who wrote, produced and
directed this compact exercise in paranoia, posit some intriguing riffs
on the dependable Invasion of the Body Snatchers formula, right
down to the “One of us has to stay awake” gambit. Mirror images,
doppelgangers (some of the cast members get to double their acting
pleasure) and self-identity issues drive this sleek sci-fi entry, with
directors of photography Bernard Vervoort and Francis Schmitt capturing
an otherworldly ambiance from the austere Brussels backdrop. There is
ample time to digest Artefacts’ futuristic food for thought; the slow-moving end credits run a whopping eight minutes! Center for the Arts, Friday, May 2, 7:45 p.m.
