2015 · horror · sci-fi · space
Harbinger Down
Directed by Alec Gillis1h 22m2015
A group of grad students have booked passage on the fishing trawler Harbinger to study the effects of global warming on a pod of Orcas 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.
Our read: Harbinger Down (2015) reads as a heavy, kinetic, inventive horror · sci-fi · space entry — extreme in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, cold in temperature, nihilistic in outlook.
Heavy, kinetic, extreme horror / sci-fi, inventive in texture. Nihilistic, mid-stakes, cold.
- heavy
- brisk
- extreme
- inventive
- cold
Watching Harbinger Down tonight? Spin for your lens.
Everyone on the couch spins once and gets one craft to watch for. After the credits, compare what you caught.
Your lens for tonight
?
Everyone on the couch gets one craft to watch for. Spin the wheel to get yours. Sound on: the narrator reads your mission.
More info & search links
How Harbinger Down feels to watch.
Each axis is scored by hand, not from votes or genre averages. The bar uses the film's own colours.
What watching it is actually like.
“You want practical creature gore on a crab boat, Thing-style.”
Skip it tonight — You need polished filmmaking; this is earnest B-movie creature comfort.
Eight films that feel like this one.
Closest in the twelve-axis space, not “people also liked”. All films like Harbinger Down, with why →
Discussion
Make it a movie night.
Pick a mood, get a film the whole couch will enjoy, and give everyone something to watch for.
Pick tonight's film →