The Harbinger review: Finally, a COVID horror movie worth watching | Vulkan

Plague docs are centuries out of vogue, however the iconic outfit nonetheless endures: the lengthy coat, the goggled eyes, the masks with a protracted, birdlike beak. The costume distorts an in any other case acquainted silhouette, turning an individual into an interchangeable inhuman creature. The Pathologic video games use that design as a transparent place to begin for characters tied to a plague: The outfit’s surreal, theatrical qualities don’t simply obscure who’s beneath; they increase the query of whether or not gamers are encountering one particular person, or many.

Andy Mitton’s film The Harbinger emphasizes that unsettling high quality by turning a plague-doctor determine right into a horror-movie icon. (That’s what distinguishes it from 2022’s different horror film referred to as The Harbinger, a couple of creepy child.) The plague physician actually haunts the desires of Mavis (Emily Davis), a lady sheltering in her Queens condo through the COVID-19 pandemic. It tells her that it means to take her away perpetually, to make sure that everybody forgets her. And it appears able to appearing on that menace — the tall, hollow-eyed form provides no trace that there could be a human being beneath. Mitton is extra fixated on drama than horror, however he makes use of the plague physician idea as a dreadful omen, crafting a powerfully bleak story that makes use of the pandemic to discover the significance of human connection, and to contemplate what occurs when it disappears.

After one significantly distressing haunting, Mavis reaches out to request assist from her previous roommate Monique (Gabby Beans). Mo is dutifully quarantining together with her brother (Myles Walker) and father (Ray Anthony Thomas). These are the early days of the pandemic, when everybody continues to be cautious, nonetheless getting used to the security protocols and the brand new regular. However being cautious is lonely, even in the event you’re remoted with different folks. That could be why Mo so readily leaves her bubble, working off to assist an previous good friend she hasn’t seen in ages.

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Mavis is an outstretched hand from the world exterior, a reminder to Mo that she nonetheless issues to somebody exterior her quick household. She isn’t simply appearing out of recklessness or boredom; the bond between the 2 girls runs deeper than what’s instantly apparent.

Davis and Beans have a plausible, barely distant dynamic that colours the connection between Mavis and Mo. They have been shut as soon as, and Mo wanted to depend on Mavis for assist, however now they’re divided by years of no contact, in addition to the warning of pandemic protocol. Mo is comfortable to repay her debt to Mavis now that their roles have reversed, however the place Mo was scuffling with despair in faculty, Mavis insists her issues stem from an out of doors drive. She’s usually unable to get up, trapped for days in all-consuming desires. Her thoughts has turn into a jail overseen by a malevolent entity. Earlier than lengthy, Mo begins seeing the identical determine.

The Harbinger attracts clear parallels between the entity haunting Mo and the way in which sickness spreads, as if Mo contracted one thing by moving into Mavis’ cloud of despair. However regardless of the harbinger is, it isn’t simply a normal horror film metaphor for COVID or psychological sickness. The entity has bodily penalties that have an effect on actual time and house: When it comes for somebody, it plucks them out of actuality solely, as if the Everlasting Sunshine of the Spotless Thoughts course of was a leap scare. The sufferer disappears from the reminiscence of everybody they ever knew, as in the event that they by no means existed in any respect. It’s the last word, terrifying realization of dying alone.

Photograph: XYZ Movies

In contrast to so many current COVID films that merely use the pandemic as modern wallpaper, Mitton’s selection of setting isn’t arbitrary. He portrays a relentless existential terror that’s amplified by the pandemic trappings till it’s virtually tangible. That concern grounds the story in a particular actuality that cuts by way of the standard mental take away of watching a movie. It even provides a brand new dimension to otherwise-familiar scenes, like when Mavis and Mo search recommendation from an professional on demons, and her youngsters reply the video name as a result of they’re all quarantined at house collectively. Her subsequent fear about what the children may overhear is a humorous, mundane contact that makes it all of the extra chilling when she urgently calls for that Mo and Mavis destroy each means they’ve used to ask for assist. There’s nothing to be accomplished for them, she implies — the one factor left is to maintain them from infecting different folks.

One of the vital placing issues about The Harbinger is that it options so little of the friction that’s typical in isolation tales. Mavis dismisses Mo’s thought about seeing a therapist to debate the creature haunting her, however Mitton in any other case skips over the standard tedious “this will’t be taking place” conflicts. The 2 girls aren’t at one another’s throats as a result of they’re cooped up collectively, both. If something, they each appear glad for the corporate. That is meant to be a constructive relationship, the place Mavis has accomplished what anybody would do and reached out for the type of assist she gave to Mo as soon as, and Mo, as a good particular person, has responded.

However that doesn’t matter, as a result of the pandemic has modified the world, and this horrible entity exists to reap the benefits of that truth. Values and social norms have been inverted, and fundamental human connection is now a conduit it could actually use to unfold. This concept reaches its terrifying apex in Mo’s desires, the place she sees herself as a baby, together with her mom comforting her. When she notices the entity watching them from the nook of the room, even this primal type of connection twists away from reassurance and heat.

That’s essentially the most disturbing facet of the movie: how strange the characters’ desires appear, and the way genuine their feelings seem. A couple of dilapidated buildings apart, the desires by no means completely morph right into a haunted home of personalised horrors. The harbinger hides underneath mundanity in addition to trustworthy assist and assist, carrying it like a masks whereas the darkness burrows inside. With The Harbinger, Andy Mitton depicts a world the place closeness to others is everybody’s undoing, which turns a normal haunting story right into a profound time capsule of contemporary dread.

The Harbinger is out now in theaters, on VOD, and through digital rental on Amazon Video.