Harbinger Down

Did you see Alien or Aliens? Did you see John Carpenter's The Thing? Did you see Jaws? Have you watched Deadliest Catch? If yes, then you've seen this film, almost everything about it is derivative-- dialogue, plot, characters etc. That being said, this film is surprisingly much better than it's one star rating on Netflix would suggest.

I've recently made it my mission to see as many one stars as possibly and I can assure you this film is pretty well put together. If anything, it could use a more consistent and "big budget" looking color correction and I think the standard viewer's impression might raise their impression of this film up a notch.

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.

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.

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.

This is a very uneven movie.

On the one hand, it's not bad for an independent movie with a tiny budget. The settings is pretty nice and the actors are OK.

The movie is an obvious reference to "The Thing" and it uses practical effects and no CGI. And here lies the first problem: The effects aren't impressive. From a company that deals with practical effects, which has some veteran effects guys and lots of experience, I expected more. A lot more. The effects here only show how amazing Rob Bottin's work was over 30 years ago. I also expected the effects to be a lot more explicit, yet I always got the feeling they try to hide them by shaking the camera, cutting, putting something in front, etc.

The last problem has to do with direction: It's pretty obvious that this is the work of a first time director/writer - The movie is very uneven, there are good scenes and bad scenes, there are continuity problems, coverage problems, editing problems, things that simply don't connect and hard to understand what the director meant to do and also many scenes that seem to be missing a dialog.

All in all, this is a so-so movie for something independent without a budget. I expected more and I'm a bit disappointed, but I'd still think it's worth a watch, at least for the effort.