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  1. #1
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    Harbinger Down (2014) *REVIEW* F*ck my life...

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    HARBINGER DOWN (2014)
    Starring: Lance Henrikson and fuck everyone else.
    Written and directed by: Alec Gillis


    Harbinger Down is the brain child of Alec Gillis who you may or may not know was in charge of the practical effects work of many films but most notably the flaccid wart-infested dick of a pre-make (a remake disguised as a prequel) to John Carpenter's The Thing.

    Things had become controversial behind the scenes where Alec and his team had created a lot of practical effects that sadly we never got to see because the producers of the worthless piece-of-shit movie were not pleased with the finished results of the practical effects work so like any responsible studio they saved a few bucks in the budget, no really, to spend on CGI effects instead because that's a much better idea than spending said extra money to make the practical effects better. (Seriously)

    In response to the shitty behavior of the studio cutting out 90% of their practical effects work, Alec Gillis retaliated with a Kickstarter to make an ambitious horror film promising an experience that would surpass the terrible Thing pre-make with a successful campaign that promises to put all of the money to great use into a practical effects driven horror film that is sadly a rare art form in most horror movies mainstream or indies.

    Well, everyone jumped onto the hype-train and waited for the release of Harbinger Down and when it finally came out no one ever talked about it ever again.

    Huh...

    Well from close friends I've heard having seen it said it wasn't great so I didn't rush to see it until just recently.

    Honestly, this had to be to most devastatingly disappointing monster movie I've ever seen in a long time and that's saying something, even with the amazing practical effects work that you barely get to see, as if Alec Gillis wanted to express how more entertaining The Thing pre-make is compared to his rather half-baked version of John Carpenter's The Thing on a Ship.

    The CGI in The Thing pre-make was fucking terrible, so were the characters, the story, everything was forgettably awful and a terrible direction to take the movie that fans of Carpenter's The Thing were waiting to see mostly for the practical effects they were "promised"...but it was entertaining when you saw the aliens attacking people even if they were stupid as fuck.

    Harbinger Down is about a group of college students on a boat trip through the icy seas of the arctic where they uncover a frozen Russian space capsule containing a dead body with horrific disfigurements all over its body that one of the hottest female scientists dissects behind a sexist douchebag scientist man's back who also pokes the dead body and instantly gets infected with what the corpse is carrying...a living organism that absorbs and mutates anything it touches into horrific sea creatures after absorbing hundreds of thousands of sea creature DNA...

    The film has a huge problem with having a fun time with its plot and characters, what I mean by that is there's a stupid subplot about one of the characters being a Russian spy sent to see if the creature they brought aboard the ship was a successful murderous experiment only for her to plant bombs around to blow up the ship with everyone and the creature in it before a Russian submarine comes to pick her up...yeah, that becomes the movie's main focus outside of just trying not to be killed and turned into a fuck-puppet by the creature, this is a stupid and cliched plot device that could have been fun if the filmmakers went with it in an ironic and over-the-top way but instead it's played for straight which ruins said idea that doesn't work in the dreadful tone the whole movie is drenched in.

    The characters are all bland or forgettably dumb and most of them just exist to build up the body count, Lance Henrikson is trying sooo hard to sell this movie and while he is compelling in the little role he's doing he wasn't enough to save the rest of the movie that was otherwise dull and predictable schlock and not the good kind.

    When we eventually do get to see the creature effects in full-view they look great but sadly you only get to see them little-by-little, from the dark lighting making it impossible to see them (for "dramatic effect" hardy-har-har) to the camera which is the worst part of the movie because when it films the creatures it's up too close or it shakes uncontrollably in that terrible shaky-cam technique that I've been sick to death of ever since it became a thing. STOP THAT! IT DOESN'T MAKE YOUR MOVIE VISUALS SCARY AT ALL! IT ONLY MAKES YOU AND YOUR CAMERA OPERATOR LOOK LIKE FUCKING MORONS! STOP USING SHAKY CAM!

    The creature effects, the practical effects in the film, like I said are great-looking, but you don't spend enough time to let them settle into your mind from the problems I stated above, it's a terrible shame and that sucks because the effects are the primary thing that all the fans were paying to see and it's a travesty that these effects were shot so poorly and the story surrounding them was so cliched and unoriginal, I understand fans wanted a more respectable film on The Thing but they didn't get it, I certainly didn't get much out of it other than my underground filmmaking friends film their creature effects better and have a more lasting impression than Harbinger Down could do.

    I'm all for making more horror movies with practical effects because those are the effects that really sell a scene for me in any horror, sci-fi or fantasy movie, this movie simply couldn't deliver a decent or good creature feature and it only serves to make practical effects look more and more like a dead artform than a major comeback, despite them being great effects, they just weren't given enough focus nor given much of a decent plot to make them stand out from all the bullshit that surrounded them.

    Harbinger Down is as bad as everyone says it is, it had great creature effects and great use of atmospheric lighting and models that I appreciated a little, but it suffers from a bad unoriginal plot with forgettably dull characters and the terrible camera angles and bits of CGI ruined the entire thing that kept it from being a practical effects creature feature extravaganza that so many horror fans were hoping for.

    Better luck next time? If there'll be a next time? No? Okay, Mr. Gillis.

    3/10

    To think I defended this film's production in the past, cynicism wins again, sorry to those whom I fought with to defend the movie. It's a shitty monster flick.

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    Last edited by Toby; 03-08-2017 at 04:03 AM.

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  2. #2
    The Architect
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    FrighT MasteR's Avatar
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    5/10 from me, some good practical, but that's about it

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