Top 10 film of 2022
The Harbinger review.
The Harbinger wraps a personal nightmare inside of a relatable one. It marries high concept to a familiar world. The result is a memorable film that stands as one of the year’s best.
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The Harbinger
Directed by Andy Mitton
Written by Andy Mitton
Starring Gabby Beans, Emily Davis, Anthony Thomas and Myles Walker
The Harbinger Review
Writer/Director Andy Mitton brought us The Witch in the Window in 2018. A thoroughly creepy minimalist horror film with an expert suspenseful build. Mitton is back with The Harbinger. A bigger, bolder movie full of imagination. He’s still an expert in building suspense.
At the height of the pandemic Monique (Gabby Beans) leaves quarantine with her family to aid a friend who is plagued by nightmares. Mavis (Emily Davis) has a recurring nightmare of a demon that appears as a plague doctor. She is trapped in them…sometimes for days. The demon tells her that her time is coming soon. Monique soon discovers that illness isn’t the only thing that is contagious.
By setting The Harbinger during a pandemic it immediately forces the viewer to deal with their own personal anxieties. But the pandemic is more than a personal issue…it’s a shared one. A time of feeling frightened, confused and isolated from the world. To paraphrase Mavis explaining her situation to Monique…” Even when I can manage to wake up, I’m still in a nightmare.”
The Harbinger uses the pandemic as a starting point but builds its own horror story within it. Mitton takes us into the nightmares. Effective horror imagery and the inability to know what’s real combine to keep you on edge. The sense of inevitability fills every frame with dread. Then we wake into a world that is equally cold and frightening.
Where The Harbinger achieves its greatest effect is in building the mythology surrounding its demon. It forces its investigation to be done with the handicaps of living in a pandemic. Monique and Mavis can’t head to the library or track the history of the curse the way we’d see in other movies. They’re forced to use the unreliability of the internet and the chaos of zoom calls with a distracted demonologist. A constant reminder of how trapped and alone the real world has forced us to be.
The revelations about the Harbinger are terrific as well. Mitton creates a rich story for his demon while keeping us to a limited understanding of its history. There is a clever reason that we can only know so much tied to what the Harbinger’s purpose is. We won’t get into those specifics before people have a chance to see it. Just know that it is a clever, well thought out mythology tied to hijacking dreams.
Real world problems close in as the nightmare world threatens to take over. There is a sadness that surrounds the story and encompasses the world. It’s a relatable, familiar feeling. A smart way to draw you in and only let you distance yourself so far. Even when the characters are safe, they are in danger. The Harbinger utilizes our shared anxiety of the last few years to trap us with the characters in their extra layer of hell.
The cast adds to the sense of realism with measured, down-to-earth performances. This allows the imagery and heightened situations to feel as eerie as possible. These are real people; in a world we all feel. Trapped in their extra nightmare with its terrifying consequences. They make the decisions they should make and react to things the way they should react. Beans and Davis imbue their characters with a believability that extends to the demon fueled dreamscape.
The Harbinger builds to a well-constructed climax. It earns its payoffs and delivers a satisfying conclusion to a dream you won’t want to wake up from yet. There is definite franchise potential in the world Mitton creates…but he’s put so many good ideas into The Harbinger that it couldn’t have been in the front of his mind. It’s a rare nightmare you wouldn’t mind having again.
Scare Value
The Harbinger introduces a concept with limitless possibilities but doesn’t shirk on delivering a thorough and fulfilling experience. A story unique to our time that begets a timeless story. It preys on a shared anxiety then builds its own mythology with it. The demon known as the Harbinger is described as a bad idea. The movie The Harbinger is a decidedly great one.
4/5
An advanced copy of The Harbinger was made available by XYZ Films. Special thanks to Ted Geoghegan.
The Harbinger Link
The Harbinger Trailer
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