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At one point, a supporting player fortuitously discovers that liquid nitrogen can incapacitate the marauding creatures. Special effects by Gillis, Tom Woodruff Jr. Brown to glide his premonitory camera down dimly lit hallways and across chilly cabins, following characters hellbent on violent demises. Home Film Reviews. Aug 6, pm PT. By Joe Leydon Plus Icon.
Joe Leydon Film Critic joeleydon. See All. Produced by Benjamin L. Brown, J. Crew: Directed, written by Alec Gillis. Camera color , Benjamin L. More From Our Brands. Expand the sub menu Film. Expand the sub menu TV. Expand the sub menu What To Watch. Expand the sub menu Music. Expand the sub menu Docs. Expand the sub menu Tech. Expand the sub menu Global. With sonar equipment she finds something large under the ice.
The crew help to recover what proves to be the crashed Soviet lander, now frozen in ice. Ronelle and Stephen are awakened by the commotion and Stephen excitedly claims ownership of the lander. Graff disputes his claim and says the Russians will want their ship back. Sadie points out that the object was the property of the now-nonexistent Soviet Union, therefore maritime salvage law would give them the rights to it.
Graff infuriates Stephen further by declaring that it belongs to Sadie. Ronelle tries to contact her sister Tamara to tell her about what they found to no avail. Bowman encourages Sadie to investigate the moon lander before Stephen can find a way to claim it for himself. Bowman recruits Big G to distract Stephen while Sadie sneaks off. Sadie discovers that the Soviet cosmonaut died of an unknown infection and takes a skin sample to analyze.
Stephen becomes further frustrated when he learns she has examined the spacecraft before him. He threatens to destroy her career unless she signs over the discovery to him. Graff threatens to take the issue to the courts but Sadie gives in. Meanwhile, Sadie learns that the moon lander was carrying tardigrades , a hardy terrestrial life-form that can survive in extreme conditions. However, cosmic radiation has caused them to mutate and become capable of shapeshifting. When the cosmonaut's body goes missing, Stephen accuses Sadie of moving or hiding it.
She denies this and Bowman defends her. When Stephen becomes belligerent, Graff threatens him. While examining the lander, Stephen becomes contaminated with the mutated tardigrades, and the cosmonaut's body kills Roland. Sadie finds Stephen on deck complaining that he can't breathe and sees him stripping his clothes off despite the sub-zero temperatures.
The others drag him back in, after which several stalks sprout from his back and spray the area with a strange, dark liquid. Dock is sprayed in his mouth but Sadie confirms that they are all potentially contaminated. They make the liquid nitrogen portable by putting it into a scuba tank and proceed to freeze Stephen's body and the lander. When Dock begins to show signs of infection Svetlana locks him in a cage above deck in order to incinerate him using a flare gun. The others object to the plan until Dock also sprouts tentacle-like growths.
The tardigrades cut the ship's power, demonstrating high intelligence, but the backup battery kicks in. As they work to restore it, the organism kills Atka, during which Svetlana is revealed to be a Russian spy. Holding Sadie, Bowman, Big G, Ronelle and Graff hostage, she explains that the tardigrades were part of a Soviet experiment to create radiation-resistant cosmonauts.
She does not want to reclaim the Soviet moon lander but instead intends to sink the boat after being picked up by a nearby Russian submarine. Before she can kill her hostages, however, the organism attacks, causing Svetlana to lose her gun.
Ronelle picks up the gun, but is grabbed by the creature and pulled through a small pipe. When Svetlana tries to reason with the others, she too is grabbed by the creature and dragged off. The survivors Graff, Sadie, Bowman and Big G search for several explosive charges that Svetlana has hidden throughout the boat. The last four are hidden in the bilge , a tight area which only Sadie has access to.
As she collects the explosives, the others discover that the tardigrades have consumed and absorbed their latest catch, two tons of crab. As they call down to warn Sadie, she realizes she is standing amid the tardigrades. Although she escapes, Graff is infected. He instructs Big G to restart the boat and Sadie to pilot it before asking Bowman to kill him.
Big G restarts the ship but dies after battling Svetlana's shape-shifted and mutated body. Before Bowman can freeze Graff with the liquid nitrogen, Bowman is impaled by the creature. Graff, fighting the creature, instructs Sadie to scuttle the boat and save herself. She steers it toward an iceberg and escapes just as the creature bursts through the deck.
Via the portable radio, the US Coast Guard alerts her that a rescue helicopter is in her vicinity. The helicopter can be heard approaching as Sadie lies motionless on the ice. In , Amalgamated Dynamics was hired by Universal Studios to create the practical special effects for the The Thing prequel.
This decision was upsetting to the crew of Amalgamated Dynamics, as this was not the first film of theirs where they later found their work replaced. According to Gillis and Woodruff, the video received such an overwhelmingly positive response that it inspired them to use their official YouTube Channel to feature their archived videos of creature effects from throughout their career.
Gillis said that it was the tipping point that prompted them to go ahead with their dream of producing their own film. They view it as a commodity and a product, and they've corporatized the structure of creating art and in the end it all becomes disposable.
That's not how the fans see our work. The film's in-story events open on June 25, , a tribute to the release date of John Carpenter's The Thing.
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How did you buy your ticket? View All Videos 1. View All Photos Movie Info. Thawed from ice after three decades, mutated creatures recovered from a piece of Soviet space wreckage terrorize a group of graduate students on a fishing trawler. Alec Gillis. Aug 7, limited. Sep 1, Vertical Entertainment. Lance Henriksen Graff.
Camille Balsamo Sadie. Matt Winston Stephen. Reid Collums Bowman. Milla Bjorn Svet. Winston James Francis Big G. Mike Estime Dock. Edwin H. Bravo Atka. Giovonnie Samuels Ronelle. Alec Gillis Director. Alec Gillis Screenwriter. Camille Balsamo Producer. Hadeel Reda Producer. Benjamin L. Brown Producer. Jason Speer Executive Producer. Paul Stewart Executive Producer. Christopher Drake Original Music.
Brown Cinematographer. Brown Film Editor. Joey Paul Jensen Casting. Niner Parikh Casting. Kyle Michael Wilson Production Design. Spencer Brennan Art Director. View All Critic Reviews 8. Jun 03, Gimly M Super Reviewer. Dec 28, There's two reviews here that point out the fact that this movie's existence is only tied to the fact that it was a showcase for Alec Gillis' practical creature effects and I would honestly have to say that that is an incredibly accurate description of this film.
Because, let's be honest here, the story, and setting, borrows heavily from classics like Alien and Carpenter's The Thing, they're isolated with no way to escape and there's tension in the air that causes people to be distrustful of one another. But it's also one that really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And I don't mean that it's Inception-esque, where you actually have to use your brain a little, but its exposition is just terrible.
This does an awful job at setting its own concept and then it does an awful job at expanding upon it. It gets to the point where you literally start to ignore the characters because it's clear they're not really saying anything. The film's acting is nothing special, though Camille Balsamo, who played Sadie, did a decent enough job and Lance Henriksen always adds a certain something to the movies he's in, even if he's not outstanding in them.
But everyone else didn't really do anything for me. Reid Collums, who played Bowman, was honestly really terrible. Then again, I don't know if bland and having a lack of charisma makes someone a bad actor. But, honestly, Reid's delivery is terrible. More like this. Storyline Edit. A group of grad students have booked passage on the crabbing boat Harbinger to study the effects of global warming on a pod of Belugas in the Bering Sea.
When the ship's crew dredges up a recently thawed piece of old Soviet space wreckage, things get downright deadly. It seems that the Russians experimented with tardigrades, tiny resilient animals able to withstand the extremes of space radiation. The creatures survived, but not without mutation. Now the crew is exposed to aggressively mutating organisms. And after being locked in ice for 3 decades, the creatures aren't about to give up the warmth of human companionship.
Terror is just beneath the surface. Rated R for language and creature violence. Did you know Edit. However much to ADI's dismay, the studio had the majority of their work digitally replaced with CGI for the final cut of the film. In response to this, ADI used Kickstarter to fund this film, Harbinger Down, which features entirely practical creature effects created through the use of animatronics, prosthetic makeup, stop motion and miniature effects.
There are zero computer animated monsters in this film. Goofs at around 1 min The coordinates in the opening scene, Quotes Graff : You're gonna need a bigger bucket. Connections Referenced in Skin Wars: Man vs. Machine User reviews Review.
Top review. I first saw the trailer on Youtube and I thought to give it a try. I must say it was an entertaining trailer, but I got disappointed by the actual movie. This movie is pretty much like The River - set in a confined space of a ship - only with another "entity" instead of the curse of the Amazon. Not a waste of time, but I personally believe there are so much more to be done with the story.
The story is also almost too similar to Whiteout or whatever "entity" containment type of story. So, I gave it a five star, just because it does not waste my time. FAQ 1. What is Harbinger Down about? Details Edit. Release date August 7, United States. United States. Official Facebook official site.
Chatsworth, California, USA. Box office Edit. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 1 hour 22 minutes. Related news.
When a group of students discover a frozen Soviet lander, their investigation reveals that there is a terrestrial life-form inside. Things take a turn when it starts attacking them. Harbinger Down: Directed by Alec Gillis. With Lance Henriksen, Camille Balsamo, Matt Winston, Reid Collums. While studying the effects of global warming on. Harbinger Down is a American independent science-fiction monster horror film written and directed by Alec Gillis and produced by Tom Woodruff Jr.