The Harbinger

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.

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.

This is a movie that will age like a good wine. Maybe it's too soon for some. The pandemic is still too much on our minds, there are things we prefer not to relive and it brings us anxiety. However, it has much more to say about the memories we leave in the world - or the fear of not leaving them - than just about the pandemic itself (in fact, it parallels those times so well that it didn't need so many direct references, falling a bit in overexposing that and being too much on the nose).

I'm afraid that the number of dreams in the film might turn off some viewers, but this is a film about dreams (or nightmares) and that's where the film lives. Think of Nightmare on Elm Street and think that here the fears that plague us while we rest also kill us. Perhaps because we are/were not really resting.

Many other themes are being explored (trauma, family, friends, support, fake news, isolation, depression...), but more importantly, the film never forgets to be a horror film, with very tense scenes, effective enough to have me clinging to my chair - the last one culminating in a brilliantly effective jump scare. Even when everything looks good, we must not let our guard down, and we must not stop fighting, because it is when we relax that we are most vulnerable. Great acting by Gabby Beans who is going to be a star.

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.

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]