Wednesday, 30 April 2025

On demand: "The Harbinger"


A Covid-era
Carnival of Souls, coming out of nowhere to conjure a very particular, disconcerting mood, the rapid-response indie horror The Harbinger uses the backdrop of lockdown's first days - masks everywhere, inside and out; wipes for groceries; widespread uncertainty as to what was going on, and going wrong - to tell a story about our reliance on one another, and how temporary and fragile life really is. Old college pals Monique (Gabby Beans) and Emily (Emily Davis) agree to form a bubble to help the latter through a pronounced spell of night terrors involving a figure in a medieval plague mask. Yet that's just one tension among many writer-director Andy Mitton sets out: there's a sick child (Cody Braverman) in the apartment upstairs, a snarling anti-vaxxer (Stephanie Roth Haberle) in the flat next door, and soon even the notionally well-balanced Monique finds herself succumbing to bad dreams themed around her late mother - the suggestion on Mitton's part being that nightmares, like viruses, can be sticky, suffocating and far easier to pass on than they are to shake off.

It's visibly been made on a shoestring, centred as it is on small groups of people in humdrum, underlit rooms, but what's crucial is that those people are very convincing as people: flawed, neurotic, unravelling as we all were to some degree in that sorry span between the first lockdown and the rollout of the vaccines. Mitton's quest for the most credible responses to incredible developments extends even to a Zoom call with a woman trying to juggle childcare with her day job as a demonologist; any extravagance on this director's part is reserved for his dreamscapes, which set us down somewhere between the expressive shadowplay of a Val Lewton B-picture and the split realities of David Lynch. Skilfully sustained over 87 minutes, it gets closer than most to redramatising a deeply unsettling period in human existence - doubtless because it doesn't have the budget to throw effects at the screen and overwrite itself - while allowing Mitton to vanquish one of his characters' biggest fears, namely departing this mortal coil without leaving a trace behind. If Blumhouse could still tell their arse from their elbow, they'd be signing this guy up as a potential new Mike Flanagan.

The Harbinger is currently streaming via NOW TV, and available to rent via Prime Video and YouTube.

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