The Harbinger

The movie does an artful job of playing on common C0V1D fears, then goes a little deeper with some fairly creepy nightmare sequences. What could be scarier than a global pandemic, you say? How about a demonic "plague doctor" who thrives on the illness, fear, and isolation of regular folks, and has the power to cancel people like they never existed, carelessly rewriting history on a whim? A "harbinger" of worse things to come? Yikes! Good thing there's no one like that in government, industry, or the media these days. The acting was a little better than expected for a horror movie, and the blending of supernatural elements with fears ripped from the headlines was moderately interesting.

On one level, this quite excellent film might be compared to "A Nightmare on Elm Street." City denizen "Mavis" contacts her old friend "Monique," who lives in a semi-rural enclave upstate. Mavis requests that Mo travel to her apartment for undisclosed, but serious, reasons.

When Mo arrives at the apartment, she learns that Mavis has been plagued by bad dreams that are increasingly violent and threaten to literally erase her, as if she had never existed. Key to these dreams, we learn, is a dark figure that controls the direction of the dream-narrative, as it were. Mo tries to help. But in so doing, she falls prey to the very dream "disease" that Mavis fell prey to. Much of the movie's balance, then, is concerned with Mo's dream world and her ideations.

On the other hand, the deep structure of the film is actually close to something like "It's a Wonderful Life" (or, heck, "Wild Strawberries"). The questions at the heart of it all: What if I depart now? What if I had never been? Erasure. We learn that these questions were already pertinent to Monique's life prior to her own "infection" by these disturbing dreams. But these questions also inform the general direction of a film that uses the isolation, impersonality and fear of the COVID 19 crisis as its backdrop and sensibility. In short, The Harbinger has ambitions beyond "the creepy."

To the extent the film meets these ambitions, Gabby Beans (Monique) deserves a lot of credit for carrying the central role from stern to bow. She is excellent. (Frankly, each of the actors was, at worst, very good.)

Mitton's writing also deserves a lot of credit. There are a few slow moments in the middle of the film. But in general, the Harbinger features tight, economical dialogue between the actors. And while the script owes more than one debt to its predecessors, it also avoids most of the expected horror movie cliches for a film in this genre (dream horror?), while playing on some familiar tropes (key among them, the "is the character imagining this, or is she really experiencing it" plot device).

Anyway, definitely recommended. Oh, and the closing scene was very well done in my opinion. A fine closer right up there with "Kingdom of the Spiders" or "Hereditary."

One plot is the horror part, which is fairly interesting. The Harbinger is an interesting enemy, and the parts dealing with this were pretty well done. It wasn't particularly scary though, which might be because of the second plot in this movie. It's essentially rubbing in the Covid-19 pandemic scare tactics that we were all subjected to back in 2020. That heavily rubbed in your face sub-plot just ruined it for me. Most of us know better than to believe the propaganda, so now it just seems absurd how horrified these people were of this virus. I finally just fast forwarded to see the ending, because I just couldn't put up with it anymore. I figure that the main characters are mentally the same type of people that wear masks diligently to this day, and even when they are alone in their vehicles. Absolutely hilarious.

Monique breaks her family's strict Covid rules to visit her struggling friend Mavis. Mavis explains that she's been having vivid and terrifying nightmares, an empathetic Monique tries to help her friend, and it soon becomes a shared experience.

Better than I had expected, it's a well produced film with a pretty good storyline. Maybe Covid was generally a little less nightmarish in general, but it still served as an effective backdrop. Good use of surreal visuals and traditional, historical horror, The Plague Doctor in particular looks great.

It was well paced, I liked the characters, the family setup worked well, I also liked the way the scares were delivered, a few jump scares, but they weren't overdone. Well written, I liked how all of the loose ends tied together.

I thought the acting was very good, I thought Gabby Beans in particular was very good as Monique, her acting helped to elevate the film.

Enjoyable.

7/10.

A real shame too... This movie honestly had really grabbed me right up until this certain point towards the end. It was a great story, very well acted, nicely paced, great suspense... and then it's like all the air went right out of it.

This to me is one of probably the most extreme cases where I guess the director/movie makers simply just did not know how to end it. I mean, EVERYTHING was super tight and effective, but then it just took this very odd turn, a very abrupt one, where you could tell the mood was completely different and to me anyway all that excellent tension and suspense that had been well crafted and built up to that point completely disappeared.

I don't know how else to describe it. Seriously... one of the most extreme cases of a movie totally taking a direction I feel completely losing everything it had up to that point. You see movies all the time that really aren't done that well and then if they get kind of stupid you're not really that surprised or disappointed.

But, the quality of the first 3/4 of the film was so well done, that really took me by surprise. I'm no professional movie maker (and I don't play one on television) but, I'm damn sure I could have come up with MANY better ways to end this story. IDK... Maybe they just ran out of time, that is the way it feels.

Again, a real shame since it had such an excellent start.

Can't really fully recommend this one, unless you can be prepared only to enjoy about the first 3/4 of it. Maybe next time the creator of the story will be able to have the time/resources/ideas in order to finish his well crafted story considerably better than this one...

FWIW, I gave it a very generous '6' just due to the excellent quality and premise that was there for most of it.