You Can’t Escape Fear When Fear Is Your Reality

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MOVIE REVIEW
The Harbinger
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Genre: Horror
Year Released: 2022
Runtime: 1h 27m
Director(s): Andy Mitton
Writer(s): Andy Mitton
Cast: Gabby Beans, Emily Davis, Ray Anthony Thomas, Myles Walker, Cody Braverman
Where To Watch: arrives in select cinemas and on VOD from XYZ Films on December 1, 2022

RAVING REVIEW: Only time will tell if the modern fearscape that we live in post-pandemic can see this film age well. A brilliant exploration of real life and nightmares that we all suffered to some extent.

Ironically, there were three 2022 films released with “The Harbinger” in their titles, so make sure you’re finding the correct one based either on the director or the cast. I can’t speak to the quality of the other two, but I know that this was an experience I won’t forget.

The film preys on our guttural response to the recent pandemic that we’re still partially fighting—swinging back and forth from an almost out-of-body experience to a grounded-in-reality nightmare. This won’t be an effortless experience for all; some will find it emotionally jarring, while others will find the connections to the pandemic tiresome within their minds—a film ahead of its time and behind its time simultaneously.

The unknown is part of the battle here, the heavy use of nightmare realities will be hard for some to keep pace with, but as a whole, they’re a necessity to keep the narrative of the film intact. The irony is that I’ve seen quite a few pandemic-related films in the past year, some documentaries, some fictional such as this. Is this a “new” film genre, or is this an experience we’ll want so badly to put behind us that it won’t be accepted?

I battled back and forth if I should give this a 3.5 or a 4 (neither of which is a bad score in my mind), and I settled on 3.5 only because I didn’t know what the longevity of this film would be. I may be wrong, and I’ll happily eat my words because I can’t stop thinking about this experience, but how will the future look at such a heavily influenced film? We just accept some movies of the past because we know these events happened. This blends reality and dreams so well that they almost become one, which works now, but I don’t know how it will age.

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[photos courtesy of XYZ FILMS]