Harbinger Down

It's hard to bash bad indie movies generally and Harbinger Down is no exception. So I'll try to keep this short and more critically factual.

This movie was kick-started by The Thing (2011) prequel's SFX leftovers that didn't pan out in the final cut of the movie so this thing got birthed on the actual Kickstarter. Inspired by the above mentioned - The Thing, and a bit of Alien, Harbinger Down storyline follows a group of people that for various reasons end up aboard the Harbinger - crab boat. After a short while, they stumble onto something frozen in ice, shenanigans ensue.

It's almost a classic-legacy horror/scifi setup these days, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Here it doesn't and the reasons why that is are numerous. I'll mention just a few of those reasons.

Right of the bat, the movie logo itself contains suspiciously similar fonts to ALIEN (HARBINGER part) and PREDATOR (DOWN part). Not a good sign.

Then there are POV found footage moments that are just random and makes you wonder why's this here? And the rest of the photography is similarly bad. Weird, too close and generally bad camera angles don't make this a pleasant viewing at all.

Characters are blank and the acting is bad most of the time. Lance Henriksen being the exception, everyone else was just not good. Leading lady was boring with some forgettable flat performances. The token white guy with beard and the token black guy were also bad as was the Russian lady.

Ah, the Russian lady. She had some truly brilliant script pieces in this. Moments like "Do you make-up, sis?", or something like that, were the moments where you question yourself why are you watching this in the first place? Also the thing that she looks kinda botoxed and nip-tucked with some super-fake contact lenses and you can see that she is actually wearing some makeup, makes this particular question even more stupid.

So, the story is bleh, script is dumb, acting is the same, are the effects any good? No. I mean, they sold this movie most on that part - the practical special effects, but they are wildly uneven and mostly cheap. Which is kinda the most disappointing, because there are some SFX veteran names in this movie.

If this movie was shot (way) better with better SFX, bad acting and dumb story would be forgiven. But it wasn't and it lacks in almost all the major parts that make a movie. Script is dumb, acting is not that good, story is recycled billion times by now, effects are not that good and as a bonus there are some just cringe, face-palm inducing moments.

It's watchable, but I see no reason why you should do that. Maybe for Lance, but he just sorta breezed through this and didn't make this movie that much better by appearing in it.

I started hearing about this movie a while ago and was really keen to check it out because of its' interesting Kickstarter origins and because of its' rather refreshing commitment (at least in this day and age) to avoid using any CGI in favor of employing entirely practical on-screen monster effects. It seemed to be, at least philosophically, an attempt to do a throwback to movies like ALIENS and John Carpenter's THE THING (two of my favorite movies), so I was very eager to support the project and primed and ready to go along for the ride.

Unfortunately, this movie only ended up reminding me of the very first and most important rule about visual effects in movies--they only ever matter when they are being used as a tool to serve something that is far more important--a great story and interesting characters. ALIENS and THE THING had great effects that definitely served important roles in those movies, but they're not what made those movies great. It was the incredibly tight writing and story-telling, the engaging characters and actors who brought them to life, and some masterful direction.

As much as I was routing for it, HARBINGER DOWN fails miserably because it uses its story and characters to prop up and serve the visual effects instead of the other way around. The story borrowed so much from THE THING and ALIENS that it brought absolutely nothing new or interesting to the table. The characters were completely forgettable and you didn't really care what happened to any of them.

And the effects? Well, they're definitely solid and it was nice to see a return to the use of practical monsters--but they honestly weren't good enough to live up to the hype that this movie promised. Given how much the filmmakers were trumpeting this movie as a triumphant return to all practical effects, they needed to raise the bar and bring out some mind-blowing, next-level practical on-screen visual magic and it falls well short of that.

Bottom line (and important lesson of the day)--no amount of visual effects wizardry, whether CGI or practical, can save a movie that is lacking good storytelling and characters.

Here's the thing--at the end of the day, real movie magic doesn't come from creating creatures and effects that seem real. Movie magic comes from creating characters that seem real and putting them in a story/situation that we genuinely care about. Here endeth the lesson.

With admittedly sharp visual and commitment to practical effect, Harbinger Down has heavy resemblance to The Thing. It will also be appreciated more for fans of old school sci-fi mystery, but unfortunately the effects are not effective. Often done in shaky motion or poorly lit sequences, the organism is a concept better hidden than shown in plain sight and the script is clearly not capable of delivering "feat what you cannot see" horror theme.

The crew of Harbinger finds a peculiar object near the Bering Sea. After hefty debate they decide to poke what seems to be Soviet satellite, a poorly made decision. Most of the screenplay is marred with needless arguments. The characters argue almost in every turn, from feeble matter and even down to crucial life preservation decision.

These are not the people one would want to be with in high stake situation. Cue the combative professor, finicky brunette protagonist and loud ship crews, then you'll have a story too similar to 2011 The Thing. Just like the creature it grows even more muddled the more it progresses.

Visual keeps a good direction for first half. It's clear, very vibrant and camera angle fits the claustrophobic location. However, it mindlessly turns into the dreaded shaky cam, even with found footage touch. There are a couple of good scenes in the making, but these lose thrill when exposed too many times, hence the shaky cam. The latter half uses blur cinematography and ends up contradicting its crisp build-up.

Despite the effect used, CGI or practical, the movie has to be engaging. Harbinger Down has a few glimpses of terror, but neither its effect nor story has adequate quality to keep the movie afloat.

A crab fishing vessel takes on board a team of conservationists, who are tracking down belugas, they discover something frozen in a block of ice, something that turns out to be a former Soviet space station.

I really wanted to enjoy this movie, I have something of a soft spot for lower budget horrors, but this just doesn't work. On paper, it sounded like fun, I'm all for that idea of a Soviet space shuttle containing something nasty.....

However, the something nasty turned out to be a bit of a poor copy of The Thing. The pink goo may have sounded like a good idea, but it just didn't work, throw in the dodgy CGI, 1980's style Russian agent and a ridiculously simplistic ending, and I'm afraid you're left with a clunker.

Some of the acting wasn't too bad, I thought Camille Balsamo did a decent job as Sadie, her boss though, that was quite something.

I couldn't sit through this one again.

4/10.

The Harbinger is a crab fishing ship sailing in the Bering sea. The captain is Bill Graff (ever reliable Lance Henriksen), and on board are students looking to study the effects of climate change on the lives of beluga whales. One of the students is Bills' own granddaughter, Sadie (Camille Balsamo). Soon they discover something interesting inside an ice floe: the long missing remains of a Soviet space capsule, a perfectly preserved cosmonaut...and something else, a malevolent life form that can change forms and liquify at will. Trapped on this ship with nowhere to go, Bill, Sadie, and others realize that they all could have been infected by this thing.

"Harbinger Down" was made by veteran makeup and creature effects creators Alec Gillis (making his writing / directing debut) and Tom Woodruff Jr. as a response to seeing all their hard work for the prequel to John Carpenters' "The Thing" replaced with CGI. That frustration is understandable, but the result is a pretty routine genre entry. Gillis's script is under developed and populated with lame characters, especially the idiotic, jealous professor played by Matt Winston (son of the late, great effects maestro Stan Winston). The character stuff in this movie, in general, is of the eye rolling variety, and Gillis fares a little better with the technical aspects of filmmaking.

He's able to generate some decent suspense, and the atmosphere is pretty impressive for the budget. Obviously, this was made as a direct tribute to "The Thing" (it even begins on June 25, 1982, the date that Carpenters' classic debuted in theatres), and it can't quite exploit the element of paranoia that the earlier film did so well. Some fans may appreciate that it's a quickly paced story that runs a mere 82 minutes, but others will likely wish that it had been fleshed out more.

As a showcase for creature effects that were *supposedly* 100% practical, it does a passable job, but the effects are often under lit, and none of them are really going to blow the audience away.

Chalk this one up as a well intentioned miss.

Five out of 10.