Harbinger Down

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.

OK Not the worst movies i've ever seen, but it's by no means going to be remembered for anything special. Lance is about the only thing that holds it together, good actor, underused in my opinion, but even he struggles in the last third to hold the film together. The acting from some, is, shall we say, tired and formulaic, there are flashes from a few, but that's the thing, it's just flashes of what could have been.

So far as the story went, it was very much a "the thing" meets "Alien" meets fishermen..... A promising idea and a good story could have been told, but alas, they fall into the traps they so desperately needed to avoid for comparisons to other more polished bigger budget franchises. A bit more attention to the less is more camp, for achieving a scare where you don't have a big enough budget, would have done more for the poor poor effects and this coupled with poor acting in parts, leaves the film sagging in places where it could have been sailing high.

As i said, not the worst, but by no means the movie it could have been. i gave it a middle of the road meh! rating

Then you completely missed the point. You took this far too seriously. Appreciate the funny parts, appreciate Lance Henriksen, appreciate the practical effects, know that it's a cheesy B movie and have fun.

It's mind-boggling that people would actually take this that seriously. It's practically a comedy horror. Guys, relax.

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.

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.