Directed by James Crow and written by Harry Boxley and Simon Cluett, Julia, sole survivor of late serial killer Decker, is lured back to the house she shared with him for a ghost hunting TV show. The crew discover the ‘Harbinger’ – a fairground fortune telling machine that reveals their fates one by one. Starring: Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott, Peter Woodward, Gary Webster, Carole Ann Ford, Nick Nevern and Tony Sands.
Unless you’re not a horror fan or have spent no time with the genre outside of big studio affairs, in which case it’s unclear how you’d end up watching Harbinger, you know what you’re getting with a film like this. It does what it says on the tin, it’s cheesy, formulaic and melodramatic. It follows an old-fashioned playbook, clearly has a penchant for the 1980s and doesn’t really go anywhere, other than exactly where you’d expect.
The problem is that trying to strike the right balance of self-awareness and fluidity with a B-movie horror is very difficult. In order for the film to hit the right notes, it needs to not take itself too seriously, embrace its preposterous nature, and have a lot of fun with the kills, violence and theatrics, and Harbinger doesn’t quite manage to do all of that.
The acting is quite loud and heavy-handed; they’re doing far too much. The style has issues, the aesthetic isn’t there, and its creative choices don’t always pay off. The idea itself of the fortune telling machine, with the great mask and creepy look is a solid horror choice, but it doesn’t come into play enough. The story gets stuck in the past, and on Julia’s (Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott) mental health, when it simply doesn’t have the skills to use those elements effectively. Meaning time which could be well spent on some gratuitous violence and villainous exposition, falls by the wayside.
Harbinger is exactly what you’d expect, and not necessarily for the better. It can be heavy-handed, with a very male viewpoint, although you could consider that a throwback to horror of the 70s and 80s. It never truly makes use of the Harbinger as its villain, that vague, deathly presence could have injected some fear but instead its evil remains sadly mostly on the human side of things. Its progression isn’t timed well enough to build some apprehension and anticipation, it’s rather insincere and it just doesn’t have enough fun with it.
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