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| Review by Joe Yezukevich |
Harbinger Down tells the story of a fishing trawler in the Bering Strait, whose pilot (Lance Henriksen) agrees to take a group of Grad Students, including his granddaughter, out on a fishing run.
When the ship picks up the wreckage of an old Soviet space capsule, the crew comes somewhat face to face with an organism that has been dormant inside and under ice for thirty years.
The organism borrows extensively from the title character of John Carpenter’s The Thing and liberally from the James Cameron book of sci-fi characters – the wizened old captain, the tough but loveable sailor, and a tough, female Russian fisherperson.
These characters are not here to move the story along, but to offer vessels for the carnage that the organism can cause.
My only complaint was that it took so long to cause the carnage and get these characters to stop exchanging the stilted, dead dialogue.
The special effects seem to be a mix of animatronics and stop motion animation. This works much of the time, though the animatronics sometimes can appear ham-fisted.
This often ignited my disbelief and took me out of the movie several times.
In the end, Harbinger Down is a good sci-fi/horror movie for people who wish the Lifetime Movie Network would start to make such films.
