THE HARBINGER **** USA 2022 Dir: Andy Mitton. 87 mins
Screenwriter / director Andy Mitton’s follow-up to the quite wonderful YELLOWBRICKROAD and THE WITCH IN THE WINDOW continues an impressive run of smart, character-driven independent horror films – this one melding a dose of 1980s style rubber reality horror against the backdrop of a major city during the pandemic.
It unfolds in a suitably wintry New York City apartment building enslaved by the restrictions and paranoia of Covid. In the opening sequence, a young woman (Emily Davis) is comforted by the building manager while she falls apart from the extended isolation. Mitton employs the language that became normality during that period: six-foot social distancing, bubbles, click and collect groceries, quarantines, mask-wearing, pervasive fears of older loved ones having to go on (and maybe never come off) a ventilator, troubling ambiguity about the potential impact on children, etc. There’s even a die-hard, older sceptic in the building: one who refuses to wear a mask but has no apparent counter argument other than dismissing those that do as “Sheeple”…at least until people start dying.
At the core is a humane, warm, witty lead performance by Gabby Beans as Monique – feeling obliged to leave the safety of the bubble she has created with her widowed dad and brother (lovely performances by Ray Anthony Thomas and Myles Walker) to help her old college friend (Davis). Optimism comes from the unity of her family and the ostensible goodness of most of the people in the building – but the eponymous “Harbinger” (a grim pastiche of both plague doctor and birdman) frequents the building, erasing the identities of its inhabitants after tricking them by appearing in dreams as their loved ones. The Harbinger has been around for a long time, but now feeds parasitically on the vulnerability of those caught up in the pandemic – just as the world’s media (and the naysayers) did in our reality.
Cleverly conveying exposition via a Zoom call with a demonologist while her home-schooled kids run around in the background (they’re played by Mitton’s real-life wife and kids), the filmmaker places the emphasis on the dread that most faced, in one way or another, at the peak of the pandemic. He’s not above jump scares – there’s at least one guaranteed chair-jumper and he nods directly to the double fake-out in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON – but it’s mostly a mood piece constructed around a stark portrait of city life at a point when everything is closed and many endure a limited, lonely existence with no obvious end. The writing is heartfelt, the performances are sincere and authentic and the early domestic scenes with Monique introduce a simple, recurring image that pays off with a low-key but absolutely heart-breaking end note.
Review by Steven West
FrightFest Presents and Signature Entertainment have released The Harbinger on Digital Platforms