Chattanooga Film Festival 2025 Coverage
The Harbor Men review
I’m not sure what The Harbor Men is trying to say…but it almost pulls it off anyway.
Festival movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
The Harbor Men
Directed by Casey T. Malone
Written by Casey T. Malone
Starring Aiden White, Randall Paetzold, Gian Chivas Pogliano, Stephen M. Wolterstorff, Mario Andre Alberts and Alice Wilson
The Harbor Men Review
The pandemic has left a long shadow on genre films. On the one hand, it’s a perfect starting point for a story. Everyone of movie watching age went through it. Evoking emotion or opinion on the subject is easily attainable on a global scale. On the other hand, we’re all exhausted on the subject. On a third hand that you should probably get checked out because it’s not at all normal, there seems to be a growing struggle for films to define what they even have to say about the pandemic. It wasn’t that long ago we were taking a look at another movie making the festival rounds, Touchdown. Pinning down what that movie has to say about the global event that caused its creation can ruin your enjoyment of it. I’m still unsure what it was trying to say.
It’s an interesting phenomenon. Stories should always strive to say something about the climate it’s borrowing so heavily from. Horror can probably get away with “member when we were in lockdown” and not commenting on it if they fill the story with bloody kills or effective frights. Using a familiar setting as the backdrop for something is fine. Stories that are specifically about pandemics should probably say something. That’s where these stories have started to struggle. Sick made no bones about what it had to say. It used irresponsibility and selfishness during a dangerous time as the catalyst for bloody vengeance. Touchdown is far more confusing. The Harbor Men isn’t as confident as the former. It’s not as unsure as the latter either. Mostly because it finds a way to downplay the importance on the matter over time.
The Harbor Men takes place during a strange viral outbreak on the waterfront. Steven (Aidan White) is a vaccine denier angry that his decision has cost him his job. He’s done his own research, you see. He knows better. Everyone around him tells him how misguided he is on the subject. They all know someone who has been affected, and they view his choice as harmful and selfish. Sounds familiar, right?
This virus can drive you crazy. When you are infected…you begin to see things. Eventually you’ll be dead. Steven starts seeing things eventually, of course…which is a point in favor of a story that takes its pandemic seriously. The Harbor Men does a great job setting up the way the virus works…and giving us a few cases where it would be right to question what Steven is seeing. He’s an unreliable protagonist…if the virus is real. Given the number of eyewitness accounts we hear throughout the story…we have every reason to believe that it is.
He sees a murder and ends up with a case containing a strange musical instrument. An orchestra bell, to be specific. He also sees several people wearing masks on the street. Not just the face masks worn during a pandemic…Halloween masks and plague doctor masks and devil masks. The coolest way The Harbor Men uses the misdirect involves an altercation over his careless behavior the aftermath of which leaves him shaken enough to question whether he’s been wrong. A neat narrative trick that shows how unreliable seeing things from his perspective can be.
While the question of Steven’s sanity never leaves the plot of The Harbor Men…the plot itself does find a different focal point. The instrument inside the case. We learn some cosmic things about it…and the film itself eventually steps outside of time itself. What had been a black and white picture suddenly throws flourishes of color at the screen to accentuate its sci-fi moves. This is where the story’s steady take on the pandemic gets a bit cloudy for me. It’s good that you can read into a film in multiple ways…but bringing color to a black and white world…allowing the protagonist to literally see things in a fuller way than everyone else…not sure about that choice. I’m not sure that The Harbor Men is either. It crafts plausible deniability anyway you choose to interpret it. Which is a kind way of implying it might not actually have anything to say.
Scare Value
The Harbor Men is an interesting movie. There’s certainly a read you can make into it that will agree with the opinion you bring to it. I’m not sure that it nails that landing without compromising its own authority on what it’s saying…but it’s interesting, nonetheless. Mostly, I feel like we’re all just a bit tired of talking about it. Which is a tough place to start.
