Rating: NR | Runtime: 97 minutes
Release Date: December 1st, 2022 (USA)
Studio: XYZ Films
Director(s): Andy Mitton
Writer(s): Andy Mitton

Someone has finally made a pandemic film that both taps into the universal fear of the moment and the unshakeable sense of futility felt by those of us who have yet to accept the lie that it’s over. Andy Mitton’s The Harbinger wields COVID as a literal and figurative foe. His characters are living through quarantine and doing everything they can to ensure their bodies remain free of the virus physically, but their minds are also being infiltrated by a different invisible danger.

It’s so simple and yet so profound: our collective wish to not be forgotten. That’s what has Emily Davis’ Mavis so shaken. Enough that she calls her old college roommate (Gabby Beans’ Monique) for help when it seems her fate has already been sealed. Because, in many respects, it has. The instant our government decided that the economy was more important than human lives was the instant we forgot all those who had already been killed while also ignoring all those that still are. If their absence wasn’t enough to take notice, they might as well have never existed at all.

That’s what the titular antagonist here strives to make happen. He enters Mavis and Monique’s minds to hijack their dreams until the nightmare outside and the nightmare inside can no longer be separated. It leads to some well-orchestrated scenes of terror and despair since even the bright spots of hope can be rendered as nothing but red herrings meant to sink his claws deeper. We want to believe there are some people we simply cannot forget, but a quick glimpse around my local grocery store to see no one wearing a mask proves the opposite.

Davis is great as the catalyst—her fear palpable enough to transfer the “idea” of this monster to her old friend. And Beans carries the film with a strength of resolve built upon crucial yet organic exposition that’s able to show why she can be the one to finally take him down. Except, of course, that nobody is immune. Tell someone everything is okay and they’ll breathe a sigh of relief right up until the moment they realize it never actually was. By then it’s too late.

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Gabby Beans as Monique in THE HARBINGER.