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

The plague doctor has gone out of fashion for centuries, but the iconic costume still lives on, including a long coat, goggle eyes, and a mask with a long bird-like beak.Costumes distort familiar silhouettes, turning people into interchangeable, inhuman creatures. The game uses that design as a clear starting point for characters tied to the plague. The surreal and theatrical nature of the costume doesn’t just obscure who’s underneath. They raise the question of whether the player will encounter her one individual or multiple individuals.

andy mitton movies Harbinger Turning the plague doctor figure into a horror movie icon emphasizes its unsettling nature. (That’s the difference from 2022 other horror movie called Harbinger, about creepy kids. ) The plague doctor literally haunts the dreams of Mavis (Emily Davis), a woman taking refuge in her Queens apartment during the COVID-19 pandemic. He tells her that it means taking her away forever, so that no one will ever forget her. The shape gives no hint that there might be humans underneath. It crafts a powerful, dark tale that explores the importance of connection and what happens when it disappears.

After a particularly harrowing haunting, Mavis reached out to her old roommate Monique (Gabby Beans) for help. Mo lives in dutiful isolation with his brother (Miles Walker) and his father (Ray Anthony Thomas). These are early days of the pandemic and everyone is still taking precautions and getting used to safety protocols and the new normal. Therefore, Mo immediately left his bubble and ran to help an old friend of his who he hadn’t seen in a long time.

Mavis is an outstretched hand from the outside world, reminding Mo that she is still important to someone outside her immediate family. The bond between the two women runs deeper than it immediately seems.

Davis and Beans have an incredibly detached dynamic that colors Mavis and Mo’s relationship. The two used to be close and Mo had to ask her Mavis for help, but are now separated after years of no contact. Note of Pandemic Protocol. Mo is happy to pay off her debts now that her roles with Mavis have been reversed, but while Mo struggled with depression in college, Mavis says her problem is hers. attributed to external forces. She is often unable to wake up and is trapped for days in her all-consuming dreams, her mind turned into a prison overseen by malevolent entities. begins to look the same.

Harbinger It draws a stark parallel between the entity that haunts Mo and the way the disease spreads, as if Mo had become infected with something by stepping into Mavis’ clouds of despair. But whatever the harbingers, it’s not just a standard horror movie trope of COVID or mental illness. Eternal Sun of the Immaculate Heart The process was jump scares. Victims disappear from the memory of everyone they ever knew, as if they never existed. It is the ultimate terrifying realization of solitary death.

Photo: XYZ Film

Unlike so many recent COVID movies that simply use the pandemic as contemporary wallpaper, Mitton’s choice of setting is not arbitrary. He depicts a constant existential dread amplified by the trappings of the pandemic until it actually materializes. Take to otherwise familiar scenes, such as when Mavis and Mo seek advice from a demonic expert and answer a video call as her children are quarantined together at home. Adds a new dimension. Her subsequent worrying about what the children might overhear is a funny and mundane touch that destroys all means used by Moe and Mavis to seek help. There’s nothing to be done for them, she suggests — the only thing left to do is keep them from infecting others. Thing.

one of the most impressive Harbinger Mavis dismisses Moe’s idea of ​​seeing a therapist to discuss the creatures that have haunted her, but Mitton believes otherwise the normal Skip the boring “this can’t happen” confrontation. The two women aren’t at each other’s throats because they’re trapped together. There seems to be This was meant to be a positive relationship, and Mavis did what everyone does and asked for help like she once gave Mo, and Mo responded as a decent person.

But it doesn’t matter. Because the pandemic changed the world. This terrifying entity exists to take advantage of that fact. Values ​​and social norms were reversed, and basic relationships became available conduits for diffusion. This thought reaches a terrifying climax in Mo’s dreams. There, her mother consoles her and sees herself like her child. Even this primitive form of connection fades away from the sense of security and warmth when she realizes that her entity is watching them from the corner of the room.

That’s the most disturbing aspect of the film: how mundane the characters’ dreams seem, and how genuine their emotions seem. The Harbinger hides beneath mediocrity and honest help and support, wearing it like a mask while darkness lurks within. HarbingerAndy Mitton describes a world where intimacy with others ruins everyone, turning the standard haunting tale into a profound time capsule of modern horror.

Harbinger Currently out in theaters, VOD, and via Digital rentals on Amazon Video.