I don't know why, but I had high hopes for the very low budget UK indie horror - Harbinger. I didn't actually know anything about the movie, so not entirely sure why I was optimistic for great things, I even gave it the extra chance by watching it at night; a rare occurrence for me due to annoyingly not being a 'night owl'. Directed by James Crow (Curse of the Witching Tree), this supernatural horror has a few choice casting choices, but would this be enough to elevate it past some of its weaker components?
In a wild prologue, Julia (Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott - Helloween), discovers that her boyfriend of 18 months, Henry Decker (Peter Woodward - The Patriot) is actually a homicidally insane serial killer who plans for her to be his seventh victim. Fatally shot by police, the man collapses next to an antique fortune teller machine, mumbling a strange chant as he lay dying. Unknown to all, this chant was a magic spell that transferred his consciousness into the machine.
Five years later and Julia still suffers PTSD, frequently hallucinating that Decker has come back to life. One day she is approached by Mike (Gary Webster - Minder); the presenter for a popular paranormal investigation show called Spectre Investigates. He wants her to return to the mansion her and her ex-boyfriend lived at as part of a new episode of his show. Desperately needing the money being offered, Julia hesitantly agrees. Not long after arriving at her former home with the show cast and crew, everything goes wrong. Decker now possessing the fortune teller machine, uses his supernatural powers to seal all the doors and windows, trapping the visitors inside. His plan is to perform a ritual that will return him to some sort of life, and to do that, he requires six sacrifices.
Being very low budget, some of the acting is a bit suspect here. The more over the top characters fared better than the more measured performances on show. Woodward was excellent as the manic antagonist. One part The Joker, one part Moriarty, he was a joy to watch on screen, so much so that I found myself wishing the prologue had been the whole film. It was a lot better than the undercooked paranormal direction the main film went into. Webster's Mike, and the actor playing the hatted psychic also excelled in their roles, again due to their larger than life performances. Weirdly, I felt that Sothcott didn't really work as the protagonist. She might not be a bad actress, but physically her acting came across as a bit wooden, with her facial expression not changing much based on the situation. The character she played was quite dense, with even other characters within the movie wondering how she could be with Decker for so long and not realise he was a total maniac. The man was Looney Tunes from the off, and it was hard to believe they could have ever been even a façade of a couple. Julia is in good company for stupidity as this cast of characters love to make classic horror movie mistakes. Discovering you are trapped in a house due to an evil paranormal force isn't a good time to decide to go off and have sex for instance, nor would it make sense for near enough every character to at some point make up an excuse for why they needed to go and be on their own, rather than sticking together as a group. Most of the cast felt a bit like Star Trek red-shirts, just there to beef up the kill count without needing to be well developed characters. A forgettable bunch not helped by a soap opera level sub-plot about infidelity and accidental pregnancy going on in their background story.
The supernatural element is loose and ill-defined with it never clear as to the extent of Decker's powers. Is he a ghost able to materialise anywhere at any time to kill his victims? Is he literally possessing the body of the dummy in the fortune teller machine and killing people in a more physical slasher fashion? The film never seems entirely sure either, giving him of combination of both styles seemingly on a whim. When the kills begin they come thick and fast. You hardly have time to mourn (so to speak) the death of one character before another is swiftly dispatched in quick succession. Strangulation, a slit throat, and eyes being squished into the skull; all sound fine on paper, but there was something uniformly lacklustre about how they are shown on screen. Take the slit throat, sounds neat, but was ruined slightly by little to no blood.
Harbinger felt like it focussed on the wrong point in time with its story. Decker was never as joyously villainous as he was in the fun prologue sequence. As a ghostly force he never worked as effectively; the best character relegated to the background, and who was often represented by a bland looking possessed French clown dummy rather than the delightfully gurning Woodward. Look past the low budget and there are a couple of moments of magic to be found. As a whole though, for me this just didn't land. Harbinger came to UK digital on 10th August and on Blu-ray, and US digital on 11th August, thanks to Miracle Media.
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