{Movie Review} The Harbinger (2022)

The world of horror has always reflected our cultural fears. So it should surprise no one that Covid Pandemic horror has been all the rage lately. To put all of my cards on the table, I don’t love it. Most of the Covid horror I have watched seems to try and shoehorn in old tropes into the new confines of our collective pandemic isolation. As a result, most of it feels like What if it was Scream, but during the lockdown. It is both too soon and not fresh enough. A mostly toxic mix that does absolutely nothing for me. I say all of that to acknowledge that The Harbinger, directed by Andy Mitton, should not be my thing. It is set in the early days of the pandemic when everyone was afraid of what may come, both with the disease but also with the growing divide between people who believed in science and those that did not. The Harbinger is the first pandemic movie to get it right. From the color palette to the entire mood of the movie, The Harbinger delivers on several levels. It is the first movie to use the pandemic to create new horror, not just use the setting for cheap thrills.

Monique (Gabby Beans) is bunkering down in the apartment she shares with her father and brother. The family is especially careful because Monique’s father appears to suffer from some sort of COPD or other diseases that impact his breathing. The desperation both Monique and her brother portray will feel very familiar to most of us who balanced our own welfare with the welfare of our aging parents. So when Monique visits a friend who is plagued by nightmares that prevent her from waking up, she must reconcile the risk to her father with the desire to help her friend. As the nightmares get more intense, Monique’s grasp on reality weakens. The nightmares appear to be caused by a demon called The Harbinger, who not only kills its victims but erases them from reality. “it is as if they never existed”, opines the demonologist the two call up via zoom.

Beans is the star of this movie. She somehow captures the duality all of us felt during the lockdown. Can we take care of everyone around us while taking care of ourselves? As Monique’s back story unfolds, we never see her as fragile but weathered. She is stronger because of her past trauma. Bean’s performance gives us that strength while keeping her and her family vulnerable to malevolent forces. This idea we could do everything right and still lose is a morale crusher and, again, feels like a genuine emotion that is specific to the pandemic. It is her performance that transforms the movie from a pedestrian pandemic flick to something bigger and more personal.

The movie uses generous dream sequences to ratchet up the fear but also gives the movie a scope that many other pandemic movies are not interested in providing. From abandoned apartments to creepy woods, Mitton provides a series of haunting settings that manage to capture a dream’s whimsey while maintaining the dread of a nightmare. For Mitton, our dreams are both an escape from the confines of our homes and a reminder that whatever else is out there can be just as terrifying. While the demon lacks some of the flair of other movies that have come out recently, it delivers enough on the monster front that when we get a full reveal at the end, it is scary enough. The monster seems at least partially based on a plague mask which works with the film’s themes.

Mitton is at his best when he explores how weird circumstances create weird relationships. From the underseen and underappreciated Yellowbrickroad to the fantastic adult fairy tale that is The Witch in the Window, Andy Mitton wants to scare us to help us see our relationships for what they are. Sometimes they are anchors that drag us down, but often these relationships anchor us to the world of the living, and when we lose them, we can lose ourselves in the process.

Monique has long suffered from mental illness, and that struggle feels very real (as one who struggled immensely with these issues during the lockdown, I get it). Some may find these discussions triggering, so go in with your eyes wide open. Suicide in this film is treated delicately, but it plays a role for sure. The characters who grapple with it feel real, and their suicidal ideations are not treated as a plot device but rather as fully formed emotions that lots of us grapple with. Are we enough for our families? Are we too selfish? How do we handle our own limitations when we have to confront them? Finally, what is our legacy, especially if the nothingness of time grinds away our contributions?

The Harbinger is a beautiful and haunting film. A movie that manages to capture the horror of the pandemic while also positing that the pandemic may just be the start of darker things for us and the country. It deserves all the accolades, and you can watch it today on VOD.