THE HARBINGER (2022)

Studio:     XYZ Films
Director:    Andy Mitton
Writer:     Andy Mitton
Producer:  Richard W. King, Jay Dunn
Stars:     Gabby Beans, Emily Davis, Ray Anthony Thomas, Myles Walker, Cody Braverman, Jay Dunn, Stephanie Roth Haberle, Laura Heisler

Review Score:

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Summary:

Reunited during the pandemic, two estranged friends are haunted by an entity with the power to erase people from existence through their dreams.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Becoming concerned when he overhears her weeping worryingly again, building manager Jason enters the apartment of his tenant Mavis. Jason shakes Mavis from a deep sleepwalking trance to find she bloodied her arms by clawing at them in a failed attempt to wake up. Seeing her disheveled condition, Jason recommends that Mavis contact someone who can help her.

Mavis asks her estranged friend Monique Cartwright, whose suicide Mavis helped prevent when they were younger, to temporarily stay with her. Despite concerns expressed by her father Ronald and brother Lyle, all of whom are currently living together in stay-at-home isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, Monique breaks quarantine to visit Mavis. Monique leaves behind a sketch of a sparrow, which is what her parents nicknamed her.

On her way up to Mavis’s apartment, Monique has a brief encounter with Mavis’s angry neighbor Crystal over quarantine protocols. Monique also learns that a sick little boy, Edward, lives above Mavis.

After their reunion, Mavis reveals to Monique that she has been suffering from chronic nightmares and she has been having an increasingly difficult time waking from them. Mavis explains that a haunting entity drives the dreams, and it recently threatened to kill Mavis, which would in turn cause memories of her to be forgotten in the real world.

Monique offers to sleep beside Mavis. Monique dreams about her dead mother. That dream leads to a nightmare where Edward from upstairs crashes through Mavis’s ceiling. Monique then sees a hooded plague doctor in the doorway. Edward tells Monique that the dark figure is happy to meet her. Monique suddenly wakes.

After rousing Mavis from another trance that left her bloodied, Monique admits she had a bad dream, but brushes it off as a byproduct of what Mavis told her. However, reasoning that if what Mavis said is true, Monique posts her claims online in an effort to find other people experiencing the same thing. Aided by Mavis’s description, Monique sketches the plague doctor figure that both women saw in their dreams.

Monique realizes she is stuck at Mavis’s apartment after Jason slips a letter under the door informing tenants that a resident tested positive for COVID-19. The matter becomes more emotional when everyone learns Edward died unexpectedly.

Monique has another series of nightmares involving a man without a nose as well as Edward. Monique wakes to see Mavis in the midst of another trance. When Mavis finally wakes, Monique admits that both of them are having the same experience.

Through their online post, Monique and Mavis arrange a video call with a demonologist named Wendy, who becomes deeply concerned when Monique shows her the plague doctor sketch. Wendy identifies the figure as “Harbinger.” She warns that it spreads through fear by planting psychological seeds regarding its ethereal existence in people’s minds. Before continuing the call, Wendy has the women delete their post and burn the sketch to prevent additional victims from discovering Harbinger.

Wendy confirms that Harbinger can alter reality to make it like some people were never born. However, small relics or mementos are sometimes left behind from before that person’s existence was erased. Wendy believes she has previously spoken to people like Monique and Mavis, but she doesn’t remember them anymore. Wendy also claims there is no known way to stop Harbinger. She then abruptly ends the call after Mavis gets frustrated.

Mavis struggles to remember how Harbinger’s seed was first planted with her. Mavis shows Monique a single photograph of a man she doesn’t recognize, and theorizes he must have been someone she was in love with before he vanished.

Monique has a nightmare where her father Ronald and brother Lyle admonish her over breaking quarantine protocols. Another encounter with Harbinger transports Monique to a funeral home. In the morgue, Edward tells Monique that Wendy was wrong as he claims there actually is a way to defeat Harbinger. Edward asks Monique if she knows what to do and she nods yes.

Edward next asks Monique to show him where she sleeps. Edward and Monique then appear over Mavis’s bed where they helplessly watch Harbinger pull Mavis away screaming, which erases Mavis from existence in reality.

Monique wakes in an empty apartment. Jason warns Monique she is trespassing. With no memory of what happened or how she got there, Monique calls Lyle, who had been worried about his sister after she went missing for several days without explanation.

Back at the Cartwright home, Monique dreams of Harbinger. Monique pleads to be spared because her family needs her, but Harbinger insists on erasing her like she wanted when she tried to kill herself. Monique fights back and saws off Harbinger’s head.

In the dream, Edward comes to the door. Edward congratulates Monique on killing Harbinger. Monique thanks Edward for his help. After asking if she is ready to wake up, Edward takes Monique to a bed outside in the snow. Monique wakes back at home to discover she had been asleep for three days.

Monique calls Wendy to let her know the experience ended. Wondering how she found out about Harbinger in the first place, Monique examines a photo of her with Mavis, whom she doesn’t remember. Wendy recommends that Monique hold onto that relic.

Monique notices Wendy appears distracted. Wendy asks Monique how she knew what to do to stop Harbinger. Monique tells Wendy about Edward. Wendy cautions that Harbinger is everyone inside her dreams, but Monique claims Edward was an angel. Monique ends the call when Wendy becomes insistent with her warnings.

Harbinger suddenly bursts into the room and drags Monique away. A neighbor investigating the commotion comes to the house and snaps Lyle out of a trance. Lyle claims he lives there alone with his father, who is currently in the hospital, and doesn’t have a sister.

Ronald returns home from his hospital stay. As he and Lyle discuss the problematic pandemic, Ronald warns that a worse darkness is coming. On his way upstairs to rest, Ronald becomes confused when he finds Monique’s sparrow sketch on the floor.

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Review:

Although it probably will be, writer/director Andy Mitton’s “The Harbinger,” which follows two women struggling to solve the mystery behind a frightening figure haunting their dreams, should not be confused with another 2022 thriller titled “The Harbinger,” a “creepy kid” DTV’er directed by Will Klipstine. It’s bad enough that recycled titles create confusion in the first place, especially when multiple movies with the same name come out close together. (Anyone else remember a prominent horror website panning Blumhouse’s “Delirium” in 2018, except the actual review was for a completely different “Delirium” before being corrected?) It’s worse when these mix-ups mess with under-the-radar efforts whose dearth of marketing money already stacks the deck against any capability of being noticed; now they have to worry about word of mouth where those mouths mutter words for something else entirely.

Of all the chillers produced from the COVID-19 pandemic, either due to it or inspired by it, “The Harbinger” has perhaps the most motivation. It feels focused, not rushed. It feels deliberately designed, not improvised. And its 2020 backdrop works into the narrative not solely as a way to justify limited locations and a small cast of characters, but as an illustrative parallel in the story’s exploration of isolation, loneliness, and the fear of being forgotten.

I don’t know exactly when Mitton made his movie, but there’s a time capsule curiousness with the particular period it presents. “The Harbinger” takes place at the panic’s peak. Now that our days appear far enough removed from the worst of everything, it feels weirdly voyeuristic to watch people deathly insist on six-foot distances, disinfect delivered groceries, and consistently wear face coverings no matter the situation. I wasn’t expecting such scenes to seem strange since we all lived through those circumstances, and yet, gazing through that lens fits with the film’s otherworldly atmosphere.

“The Harbinger” uses a mold of quarantine-related phobias, but its clay really comes from the worry of wondering what impact, if any, we leave on the world. If it weren’t so sadly spot-on, it would be ironically amusing that main duo Mavis and Monique are estranged friends, because what better battery is there for examining how our memories process people? We all have that roommate from way back when, inseparable childhood cohort, or significant someone with whom we thought a lifelong relationship was guaranteed. Then came new faces, new places, and new needs. Weekly phone calls became monthly, then yearly, then never. Have you ever thought about anyone whose name you no longer remember, and then asked when your mind decided to delete the details associated with them?

That’s part of what is happening to Mavis. Haunted by nightmares of a black-robed plague doctor that are increasingly difficult to wake up from, Mavis turns to Monique. Against the advisement of a brother and father who don’t want her bringing COVID back to their home, Monique breaks self-isolation to answer her former friend’s plea for help. What starts as a tearful reunion at a time when intimate interactions like touch are verboten unfortunately escalates into a contagious experience that torments Monique too. Both women come to fear that the phantom figure could kill them, though its additional threat of erasing them from existence terrorizes their thoughts in even crueler ways.

I’ve seen “The Harbinger” likened to “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” I agree with that comparison, if “A Nightmare on Elm Street” removed the popcorn appeal of merchandisable moments and were reshaped as an adult indie made by qualified do-it-yourselfers. The spotlight isn’t on the evil entity. It’s on macabre moodiness and the fear of fading away in a calcifying world that maybe no longer needs you. That description might make “The Harbinger” sound headier than it is. Scares are certainly more suggestively psychological than visually visceral. But if you’re familiar with Andy Mitton’s distinct brand of economic eeriness from his previous films including “We Go On” (review here) and “The Witch in the Window” (review here), and you should be, then the texture of dread he drapes over “The Harbinger” should be expected and already understood.

It’s too bad the common name hurts “The Harbinger’s” potential to earn eyes. Genuinely excellent indie horror films, or even just ones worth watching, are harder and harder to come by, and “The Harbinger” easily accommodates either of those standards. Plus, now that Benson & Moorhead have been borrowed by Marvel, and Mike Flanagan has moved up to Amazon, Andy Mitton remains one of the few torchbearers for microbudget mastery in the genre space. Movies like his, that are thematically meaningful as well as quietly unnerving, deserve to be championed by any available voice, even when their own titles might be inadvertently working against them.

Review Score: 75

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