The Harbinger Review – Pandemic horror offers eerie, unsettling scares

Disease and virus as horror is often done. Everything from It Follows to Cabin Fever has used the uncertainty of illness to guide the plot. The fragility of our subconscious has also been exploited to create one of the most enduring slashers of all time with Freddie Kruger. Yet few have slow-cooked those ingredients into a truly terrifying experience quite like The Harbinger. The recognizable concept and creature sneak up on you and plant a seed in your mind that is hard to shake.

There’s something emotionally resonant about Andy Mitton’s film that gets into your bones. More than any other cursed movie, The Harbinger terrified me to watch. I found myself looking over my shoulder and frantically searching the internet. His earlier work with Jesse Holland revels in the weird where reality bends and even the strongest are sucked into a bottomless pit. YellowBrickRoad is a personal favorite that I’ve seen too many times to count. The Harbinger doesn’t have the same violent violence as that more overtly aggressive movie, but it’s scarier in many ways.

This is truly a pandemic movie. The claustrophobic desolation most of us felt in the heart of lockdown is captured with believable dialogue and moody tones. We lived this nightmare. In the midst of the COVID lockdown, you felt terrified or stuffy with the virus and all the restrictions. While most of us crouched down trying to live in a bubble, keeping our distance from each other, the specter of uncertainty covered everything. Even the thought of doing something social felt wrong, and Mitton uses that pervasive guilt and hopelessness to create a suffocating atmosphere of fear.

Mo (Gabby Beans) lives with her father, Lyle (Myles Walker). Her brother Ronald (Raymond Anthony Thomas) works hard to supply the couple while keeping the bubble alive. This trio shares a lot of love and just as much caution. The opening scene shows how diligent they’ve been while also reminding us how disturbing it was to go to empty stores with masked people. I remember the fear and the panic when I had to go outside. The fear still lingers with me, even now that things have somewhat returned to normal. Like the monster in The Harbinger, Mitton exploits that feeling.

When Mo receives an unexpected call from her old friend Mavis in town, she has no choice but to risk her health and go to her. Mavis (Emily Davis) is in trouble and she once helped Mo when she was in a bad place. There’s a debt to pay, so she reluctantly goes to help. When she arrives at Mavis’s apartment, she finds a fragile, haunted woman, but for a while, both women are thrilled to reconnect. In short, things go well when the women remember why they were friends in the first place. It’s only when Mavis finally tells Mo about her horrible dreams that she can never wake up from that the problems start. Soon Mo is plagued by the same nightmares, and perhaps she has realized too late that there is no way out.

There’s a fragile vulnerability to Davis (The Patient) selling her desperate terror. Something terrible happens to her and she knows she is losing herself. Whatever torments her slowly erodes her essence, leaving behind a black hole of nothingness. Beans, on the other hand, have a quiet power that feels earned. The movie works best when the two women care for each other. Their relationship feels comfortable and natural and is the only stabilizing force as the story takes on a more tenuous form. The same goes for Mo’s family, who are equally angry with her for possibly exposing them and are worried about her. However, this family loves each other, which makes the impact of what is happening all the greater. Mitton is adept at putting you in the shoes of the characters in his films. The end of The Harbinger is as sad as it is gruesome.

The creature is spartan but effective in the same way the Ghost of Christmas Future still sends chills down my spine. There’s something universally unsettling about the giant bird design and silent gaze. Combining several fears, such as those of demons and being forgotten, Mitton is able to pluck a monster from our minds as if summoned there just by thinking about it. To say more would be giving too much away, but suffice it to say that the motivations and abilities are far too plausible. While the general conceit will draw comparisons to Nightmare On Elm Street, it’s based more on a confusing reality like YellowBrickRoad. It’s hard to say what exactly is real or imagined. That unpredictability makes for some of the most disturbing bits.

The dream sequences are deceptively simple. There are no fiery hellscapes or beasts chasing you, but there are all the standards everyone has dreamed of. Being stuck in a bad dream is a clever metaphor for being stuck by a pandemic. Nightmares, claustrophobia and fear of death go well together. Like It Comes At Night and Dark City, paranoia shaped our reality until it resembled something unthinkable. Mitton has come up with some very disturbing dreams that will appeal to those most affected by the lockdowns and the virus.

Good camera work by Ludovica Isidori promotes the idea of ​​shifting realities and endless dreams. There’s a certain stark ugliness to the whole movie that makes even the scenes that should be enjoyable feel ripe with nasty possibilities. Cool colors complete a faded photo that feels more dead than alive. Majestic snow scenes, neglected apartments, and homely yet pristine homes all feel as forgotten as the demon’s victims.

Like It Follows, the virus is shown not only in the coughing of a child upstairs, but also in the parasitic nature of the dream demon who has clung to Mo when she goes to visit her friend. Anxiety is contagious. Mitton uses many of the standard horror tropes, creepy kids, dark spaces, silent phantoms and desolation to good use. In this story, however, they feel fresh and just as terrifying as the first time you saw them. The Harbinger is not so much about a silent demon who stalks and wipes out his victims one by one, but more about the perversion of hope.

It’s an understated view that worms inside because it can. The pandemic has made us susceptible, says a demonologist Mo turns to for help, and that is sadly believable. While not a traditional horror story in the classic sense, The Harbinger is personal. Those who felt most affected by the pandemic will be most affected by this film. It feels made for those of us who still haven’t been able to shake the idea that we’re not safe and that things may never return to normal. That is indeed a powerful idea.

The Harbinger will be available everywhere on VOD from December 2, 2022.