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."

I am not really sure how to rate this movie. I tried to watch it last week but I fell asleep even though I wasn't tired. I thought that the movie was boring up onto that point and that that was the reason. Anyway yesterday I tried watching it again and I fell asleep once again so I watched the rest of the movie this morning and I have to say that I was really bored most of the time.

There's a good movie hidden in there and the basic concept is really interesting but the movie is struggling with pacing issues and a plot that is mostly boring with few standout scenes. It's a metaphor about Covid and what it did to people but honestly I think that this whole thematic is not that relevant anymore and kind of sucked dry.

If a movie with a story like this and some faster pacing would have been released two or three years ago I think it would have worked better. By watching the ratings I see that there are some people who enjoyed this movie, so I am not trying to convince you not to watch it but for me personally it's just didn't work. [3,5/10]

I was hoping for a good horror, instead I was presented with a rehash of the COVID pandemic. The movie cinematically looked good, the acting was decent (at least between the two main characters). The storyline was awful. The focus on COVID overshadowed the horror elements of the movie and after living through the pandemic for several years felt like a subject that we are all tired of hearing about. The story failed to explain the origins of the harbinger and didn't do a good job explaining its motivation or the purpose of the dreams. The demonologist felt like a last minute add in to provide some background, but it was poorly executed and a bit "goofy". Bottom line, don't waste your money on this movie, unless you want to watch folks talking about COVID, masking, quarantines and social distancing.

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.