Harbinger Down (2015)

Harbinger Down is a badly made B-grade version of The Thing. Much as its nice to see Lance Hendrickson on the screen again, its a shame to see him take part in this travesty of a monster flick.

Almost everything about Harbinger Down is bad. The story's timing is off, there's really no suspenseful build up and the so called monster is more silly than genuinely scary. Indeed, this film almost succeeds as a comedy where it fails abysmally as a horror.

The special effects like the rest of this film are second rate too and the acting, on the whole, is only passable.

My advice stay well away from Harbinger Down, its a real stinker. One out of ten from me.

Fmovies: Harbinger Down meant well. Its setting, characters, and creature (and creature FX!) are inspired by John Carpenter's "The Thing," a cult classic so popular it breaches its "cult" status. However, "Harbinger" doesn't break new ground, try anything new or clever, or establish its own personality. It's as if "Harbinger" was so in awe of John Carpenter's "The Thing" (or afraid of it, perhaps, as much of "Harbinger's" backing came from nerdy fans) that it's afraid of entering holy ground.

What this film has got going for it (apart from aping "The Thing") is its practical monster effects. Stop motion, animatronics, and distractingly obvious blue contact lenses for the woman playing "Svet" are all in use here. As most movies today overuse CGI (an error the 2011 prequel "Thing" so grievously commits) seeing animatronics in use is a CPR breath of nostalgia. And what's more, the creature effects (usually) look great.

There were parts during Harbinger where the twelve-year-old in me who still loves monsters and giant robots (thanks, Pacific Rim!) smiled, watching the plot unfold. But it was a wistful sort of smile. I was recalling the dread and pleasure felt from the heavy atmosphere and creature effects from John Carpenter's "The Thing." Harbinger Down is vastly inferior, and just makes me feel like watching that film instead.

So, what's so wrong with Harbinger Down? Try watching our female lead. It's like she's trying to juggle the task of acting while remembering a list of groceries or something. And I'm not picking on her; the rest of the cast is no better. The comic black guy (called "Dock" coz he used to sleep under one, yo) is meant to be sassy and defiant, but instead he comes off as a bad stereotype. The woman playing "Svet" is playing a stereotype as well, with her Hollywood movie Russian accent that falters from scene to scene (and here's a newsflash, filmmakers—no one from Russia actually talks like Ivan Drago from Rocky IV.) The only worthwhile actor Harbinger has is horror movie veteran Lance Henriksen, and the movie has him delivering lines like "we're gonna need a bigger bucket." Yeah. Again, Lance: apologies. Why the filmmakers would have you parrot classic lines from Jaws is beyond me. Is it because many of the nostalgia-fueled backers from Harbinger's crowd funding campaign were also fans of Jaws? Or maybe the screenwriter/director was just (gasp) incompetent. Who knows.

Another of Harbinger's flaws is its music. Guys, the key to any good horror movie isn't shadows, or drunk teens shouting "Let's guh-get outta here!" It's sound. Sound and music build atmosphere, and atmosphere is why we watch horror films. Example: the Silent Hill movie used music and sound cues from the original game, recognizing its effect and character. John Carpenter, the old master himself, conducted his own music for many of his films ("The Thing" included.) The music in Harbinger could not get anymore stock. It sounds like the faux-tension music used in parody scenes in episodes of South Park. An eerie soundtrack would've blessed this dumb, ugly, golem of a movie what it needed most: a soul.

But when we aren't cringing at our actors or wincing at the music, the film's direction/cinematography robs the film's monster of much of its grandeur (even though it really is just

What a shame.. what a waste.

More and more movies with decent budgets are released with bad stuff, ruining stuff in them that wouldn't have cost more money to resolve. So why is it happening you may ask yourself? I really don't know but I start to wonder if the movie makers think people are getting dumber with each generation. Perhaps they are right..

Anyhow, it could actually have been a decent, proper "The Thing" spin off. Most of the actors are actually decent with a couple of good ones. The camera work is solid. The effect that I have seen are acceptable to decent.. but they had to go an ruin it with idiocy written into or allowed to exist with the story itself.. Something that could have been eliminated.

Does it really take idiocy in a story (e.g. stupid mistakes, idiotic reasoning etc) to create a horror setting? I mean come on people.. A story can be anything the writers can come up with and yet they choose to write in ruining idiocy to start the horror and keep it going.

I don't want to write any spoilers for people, so go out and see it yourself and see if you feel the same. But it completely RUINED the movie for me and I couldn't continue watching it past 1/3 because of it. The lead female character had an ignorant, spoiled, clueless annoying look on her face from the opening scene on, but soon after I just couldn't look at her anymore because of this poor ruining story writing. I guess she became the focus point of my annoyance of this film being ruined by the writers.

Harbinger Down fmovies. In one sense, this is a special case. In another, it deserves the same critical treatment as everything else. Low-budget, independently- produced movies need to compete on the same playing field as the big stuff. We don't want Kickstarter funding to become an excuse. On the other hand, some of the crueler reviews have, I think, a rather rose- tinted view of what 80s creature features were really like. They weren't all Aliens. That's magic in a bottle, and it isn't available to order for any amount of money - or Hollywood would be able to buy it, which it's becoming increasingly clear they can't.

So, with these mixed views in mind, I rather liked Harbinger Down. If it sets out to avoid becoming saturated in embarrassing CGI, it succeeds, but naturally more is required than that. The performances are fine, given the painfully thin script - people knocking the actors need to consider the writing they've been given. The script is perhaps most kindly described as functional, and barely so. Henriksen is, of course, a massively experienced guy, and always a pleasure. The cinematography is absolutely rock-solid and a great advertisement for both Benjamin L. Brown and the staggeringly low-cost camera it was shot on. Both the pictures and Christopher Drake's score, and of course the creature effects, elevate the film way, way above the depths to which many low- budget sci-fi movies fall.

So let's not be too harsh on Harbinger Down. Behind-the-scenes shots suggest that the creature effects could have been made more of on screen, a fair criticism that's been raised before, and the script is a letdown. But again, it's a genre creature feature. For a bit more creature and a bit more story and characterization it could have been better, but on the off-chance that some sort of renaissance of the golden age of sci-fi and fantasy filmmaking can be launched from this movie, or movies like it, I'm enthusiastic. If Blomkamp does get to do Alien 5, he'd be an idiot not to involve Woodruff and Gillis.

Poor script, poor characters, poor acting, poor direction, poor special effects...need I go on? It really is sad to see Lance Henrikson ending his career making these stinkers. Do not be fooled (as I was) by some of the reviewers here saying this stands up next to Carpenters 'The Thing'....it is nowhere near it. I only granted it 3 stars because there are actually films around that are even worse. Please don't bother. Just watch 'The Thing' again instead.

I think it would be easy to criticize this movie in the context of the current climate of cinema movies being released as it doesn't fit in to this era at all. That said I think it will hold up over time like many titles you didn't expect to do so. It works as a homage to the great creature horror movies of previous decades like Alien/s and The Thing and has that magic ingredient of keeping me 'in' for the duration of what would otherwise be a schlocky genre. The special effects, which were all practical effects I found very enjoyable to watch. In some scenes they aren't as sleek as I would have liked but mostly they had that creepy-artistic effect that I haven't seen in a while. The characters were a little stereotyped but that is fine in this kind of film, and they all seemed to be having a fun time on set which again isn't a common commodity in Hollywood anymore. It would hold up very nicely as part of a retro horror night of films alongside the likes of The Thing, but more in the arena of the home cinema; a movie to watch with a beer, and since this is where all movies end up maybe it is the true yardstick.