The Harbinger Explained- Pandemic Horror Offers Creepy, Unsettling Scares

Disease and virus as horror has been done lots of times. Everything from It Follows to Cabin Fever has used the uncertainty of disease to drive the plot. The vulnerability of our unconscious mind has also been exploited to create one of the most enduring slashers of all time in Freddie Kruger. Yet, few have slow-boiled those ingredients into a genuinely terrifying experience like The Harbinger. The relatable concept and creature sneak up on you and plant a seed in your mind you have difficulty shaking. This is The Harbinger Explained.

There is something emotionally resonant about Andy Mitton’s film that creeps into your bones. More than any other cursed film, The Harbinger made me scared to watch. I found myself looking over my shoulder and doing frantic internet searches. His previous work with Jesse Holland revels in the weird where reality bends and even the strongest get sucked into a bottomless pit. YellowBrickRoad is a personal favorite that I have seen too many times to count. The Harbinger doesn’t have the same heavy-hitting violence as that more overtly aggressive film, but it is scarier in many ways.

This is very much a pandemic film. The claustrophobic desolation most of us felt in the heart of the lockdown is captured with believable dialogue and moody tones. We have lived this nightmare. Amid the COVID lockdown, you either felt terrified or constricted by the virus and all the restrictions. While most of us hunkered down and tried to live within a bubble, keeping our distance from each other, the specter of uncertainty blanketed everything. Even considering doing anything social felt wrong, and Mitton uses that pervasive guilt and hopelessness to create a smothering atmosphere of dread.

Mo(Gabby Beans) lives with her father, Lyle(Myles Walker). Her brother Ronald(Raymond Anthony Thomas) works hard to provide supplies for the pair while maintaining the bubble. This trio shares a lot of love and just as much caution. The opening scene shows how diligent they have been while also reminding us how unsettling it was to go to empty stores with masked people. I remember the fear and the panic anytime I had to go out. The anxiety still hangs with me even now after things have somewhat returned to normal. Like the monster in The Harbinger, Mitton exploits that feeling.

When Mo gets an unexpected call from her old friend Mavis in the city, she has no choice but to risk her health and go to her. Mavis(Emily Davis) is in trouble, and she helped Mo once when she was in a bad place. There is a debt to pay, so reluctantly, she goes to help. When she gets to Mavis’ apartment, she finds a fragile, haunted woman, but for a time, both women are thrilled to reconnect. Briefly, things are good as the women remember why they were friends in the first place. It is only when Mavis finally tells Mo about her terrible dreams that she can never wake from that the problems start. Soon, Mo finds herself plagued with the same nightmares, and she may have realized too late there is no way out.

There is a brittle vulnerability to Davis(The Patient) that sells her desperate terror. Something awful is happening to her, and she knows she is losing herself. Whatever is torturing her is slowly hollowing out her very essence leaving behind a black hole of nothingness. Beans, by contrast, has a quiet strength that feels earned. The film works best when the two women are caring for one another. Their relationship feels comfortable and natural and is the only stabilizing force when the narrative takes a more tenuous form. The same is true for Mo’s family, who are equal parts angry with her for potentially exposing them and worried about her. However, this family loves each other, which makes what happens all the more impactful. 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 horrifying.

The creature is spartan but effective in the same way that the Ghost of Christmas Future still sends chills up my spine. There is something universally disturbing about its giant bird design and silent stare. By combining several fears like that of demons and being forgotten, Mitton is able to pluck a monster right from our minds as if conjured there by the mere act of thinking about it. To say more would give away too much but suffice it to say its motivations and abilities are way too plausible. Although the general conceit will draw comparisons to Nightmare On Elm Street, it is more grounded in a confusing reality like YellowBrickRoad. It is hard to tell what exactly is real or imagined. That unpredictability makes for some of the most unsettling bits.

The dream sequences are deceptively simple. There are no firey hellscapes or beasts stalking you, but there are all the standards that everyone has dreamed about. Being trapped in a bad dream is a clever metaphor for being trapped by a pandemic. Nightmares, claustrophobia, and fear of death work well together. Like It Comes At Night and Dark City, paranoia shaped our reality until it resembles something inconceivable. Mitton has crafted some deeply unsettling dreams that will speak to those most affected by the lockdowns and the virus.

Good camera work by Ludovica Isidori furthers the idea of shifting realities and endless dreams. The entire film has a certain stark ugliness that makes even the scenes that should be pleasant feel ripe with nasty possibilities. Cool coloring completes a washed-out picture that feels more dead than alive. Majestic snowy scenes, neglected apartments, and homey but untouched houses all feel as forgotten as the demon’s victims.

Like It Follows, the virus is represented not just in the coughing from a child upstairs but in the parasitic nature of the dream demon who has latched onto Mo when she goes to visit her friend. Fear is contagious. Mitton uses a lot of the standard horror tropes, creepy kids, dark spaces, silent specters, and abandonment to good use. However, in this story, they feel fresh and just as terrifying as the first time you saw them. The Harbinger is less about a silent demon stalking and erasing its victims one memory at a time and more about the perversion of hope.

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

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