Ten Days of Terror!: The Harbinger (Dir. Andy Mitton)

Film: The Harbinger (Andy Mitton)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on basement television.

If you read the previous review, you had to expect that I was going to review the other film called The Harbinger next, assuming that I was able to find it. Fortunately, it was available streaming and was easily accessible. Even more fortunately, it’s not only quite a bit better than the other movie with the same name, it’s actually a pretty good movie in general.

We’re going to find out immediately that this version of The Harbinger is very much a pandemic movie in the sense that it clearly takes place during the COVID-19 pandemic. That means we’re going to have people wearing masks and we’re going to have people very specifically not wearing masks not as a plot point but just as a fact of life. The pandemic isn’t the focus of The Harbinger, but it’s definitely something that impacts the plot. This is a movie that would work without the pandemic, but having people isolated and afraid certainly adds a great deal to what it wants to do.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Harbinger (Dir. Will Klipstine)

Film: The Harbinger (Dir. Will Klipstine)
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

In 1928, if you told someone that you had just seen a new cinematic version of The Fall of the House of Usher, someone could legitimately ask you which version, American or French, you had seen. In 2021, there were two films released called Swan Song, one starring Mahershala Ali and one starring Udo Kier. This happened again in 2022, when two films called The Harbinger were released, one in July and one in September. This is about the September release, the version written by, directed by, and starring Will Klipstine.

It would be natural to think that the two movies are essentially based on the same story—something else that happens on the regular in Hollywood (see Volcano and Dante’s Peak, for example)—but these two movies have the same name and belong in the same genre, but that’s where the similarities end.