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

While plague doctors may be centuries old, they still wear the same iconic costume: the long jacket, goggled eyes, and mask with a long birdlike beak. This costume can distort a familiar silhouette and transform a person into an inhuman being. Pathologic games use that design as a clear starting point for characters tied to a plague: The outfit’s surreal, theatrical qualities don’t just obscure who’s underneath; they raise the question of whether players are encountering one individual, or many.

Andy Mitton’s movie HarbingerThis film makes the unsettling aspect of this movie even more apparent by making a doctor-pestle into an icon for horror movies. (That’s what distinguishes it from 2022’s Other horror movie called HarbingerThe story is about a scary kid. Mavis (Emily Davis), who is a plague doctor, dreams about the haunting of the plague doctor. Mavis was sheltered in Queens Apartment during the COVID-19 pandemic. The plague doctor tells Mavis that the threat is to remove her forever so that she will be forgotten by everyone. And it seems capable of acting on that threat — the tall, hollow-eyed shape gives no hint that there might be a human being underneath. Mitton’s obsession with horror is greater than his drama, however he makes use of the plague doctor idea as a terrible omen. This powerful story uses the pandemic to show the importance and consequences for human connections.

Mavis seeks help from Monique (Gabby beans), her former roommate, after a particularly disturbing haunting. Mo quarantines with Ray Anthony Thomas, her father Ray Anthony Thomas and brother Myles Walker. The early stages of the pandemic are when people are still cautious, trying to get used to safety protocols, and getting adjusted to the new norm. But being careful is lonely, even if you’re isolated with other people. That might be why Mo so readily leaves her bubble, running off to help an old friend she hasn’t seen in ages.

A plague-doctor figure — tall, dark, bird-masked, and black-cloaked — looms in the shadows in a run-down room with wallpaper peeling from the walls in The Harbinger

Photo by XYZ Films

Mavis acts as a hand reaching out to Mo from outside the family, reminding her that it is still important to others. She isn’t just acting out of recklessness or boredom; the bond between the two women runs deeper than what’s immediately obvious.

Mavis and Mo have an enviable, but somewhat distant relationship with Beans and Davis. They were close once, and Mo needed to rely on Mavis for help, but now they’re divided by years of no contact, as well as the caution of pandemic protocol. Mo will happily repay Mavis her debt, even though their roles are reversed. However, where Mo struggled with depression during college, Mavis claims that her troubles stemmed from an external force. She’s often unable to wake up, trapped for days in all-consuming dreams. The malevolent entity has made her mind a prison. Mo starts to see the exact same thing soon after.

Harbinger draws clear parallels between the entity haunting Mo and the way illness spreads, as though Mo contracted something by stepping into Mavis’ cloud of despair. But whatever the harbinger is, it isn’t just a standard horror movie metaphor for COVID or mental illness. It has real-world consequences. When it arrives for someone it takes them completely out of the reality. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless MindThe process involved a high-stakes panic. As if the victim had never been alive, everyone who knew them suddenly forgets about him. It’s the ultimate, terrifying realization of dying alone.

Monique (Gabby Beans), a dark-skinned woman in a black jacket and white scarf, stands in a dim room with an open coffin behind her and looks alarmed at something offscreen in The Harbinger

Photo by XYZ Films

Unlike so many recent COVID movies that simply use the pandemic as contemporary wallpaper, Mitton’s choice of setting isn’t arbitrary. He portrays a constant existential terror that’s amplified by the pandemic trappings until it’s practically tangible. This fear anchors the film in an evocative reality, which cuts through the intellectual distance of viewing a movie. It even adds a new dimension to otherwise-familiar scenes, like when Mavis and Mo seek advice from an expert on demons, and her children answer the video call because they’re all quarantined at home together. Her subsequent worry about what the kids might overhear is a funny, mundane touch that makes it all the more chilling when she urgently demands that Mo and Mavis destroy every means they’ve used to ask for help. There’s nothing to be done for them, she implies — the only thing left is to keep them from infecting other people.

The most remarkable thing about Harbinger is that it features so little of the friction that’s typical in isolation stories. Mavis dismisses Mo’s idea about seeing a therapist to discuss the creature haunting her, but Mitton otherwise skips over the usual tedious “this can’t be happening” conflicts. The two women aren’t at each other’s throats because they’re cooped up together, either. They are both happy for their company, in fact. The relationship is intended to be positive. Mavis did what any person would do, reaching out to Mo once for assistance, which Mo as a decent individual has responded to.

But that doesn’t matter, because the pandemic has changed the world, and this terrible entity exists to take advantage of that fact. It has reversed social norms, values and morals. The basic connection between humans and the virus is what it uses to spread. This idea reaches its terrifying apex in Mo’s dreams, where she sees herself as a child, with her mother comforting her. Even this primitive form of connection, which is based on reassurance and warmth, becomes a sham when she sees an entity in the corner.

That’s the most disturbing aspect of the film: how ordinary the characters’ dreams seem, and how authentic their emotions appear. The dreams don’t transform into an inhospitable house full of personal horrors, despite the presence of a few crumbling buildings. As the darkness grows, the Harbinger conceals himself under mundanity. You can find them here. Harbinger, Andy Mitton depicts a world where closeness to others is everyone’s undoing, which turns a standard haunting tale into a profound time capsule of modern dread.

HarbingerIt is available now in theatres and on VOD. Amazon Video: Digital rental.

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