“Harbinger Down” (2015) starring Lance Henriksen / Z-View

Harbinger Down (2015)

Director:  Alec Gillis

Screenplay: Alec Gillis

Stars: Lance Henriksen, Giovonnie Samuels, Matt Winston

Tagline: Terror is just beneath the surface.

The Plot…

Stephen along with his graduate students Sadie and Ronelle are aboard the fishing boat Harbinger.  They are at sea to study the effects of global warming on whales.  The Harbinger is crewed by ship captain Graff and his crew which consists of Bowman, Roland, Big G, Dock, Svetlana and Atka.

When an large foreign object is discovered on sonar, they bring it aboard.  To their surprise they discover they’ve found a crashed Soviet lunar module.  Aboard is a dead cosmonaut…

… as well as the alien that killed him.

Thoughts (beware of spoilers)…

Harbinger Down comes off as a low-budget homage (re-imagining? rip-off) of John Carpenter’s The Thing.  At the start of the film, the date is given as June 25 1982, which happens to be the day JC’s The Thing was released.

When the crew first discovers the module, Graff asks “Is that a man in there, or something?” This is the same question asked by Doctor Copper in John Carpenter’s The Thing.

In John Carpenter’s The Thing, Childs asks about “voodoo shit” in regard to the alien.  Here a character makes the same “voodoo shit” reference to the monster.

Harbinger Down (2015) rates 2 of 5 stars