I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Harbinger Down: 1982, a Soviet re-entry capsule is spiraling out of control, the cosmonaut is doomed but there is some strange oozing material on a surface. The present, a professor & two grad students hire a crabbing trawler (although it seems to catch lobsters) in Alaska to research Global Warming and follow a pod of whales in the Bering Sea. They find part of the Soviet capsule with the cosmonauts remains inside.One of the students discovers that the cosmonaut didn't die due to re-entry burns. Also that a biological experiment was on board involving tardigrades (water bears). The body disappears. The professor acts strangely, he seems to be burning up, then he starts growing tubules (The Thingesque)! Some stock character: the grizzled sea captain: "anyone pulls a knife on my boat, I'll gut them", "we have seawater in our veins", (to his granddaughter); the intuitive Inuit: "Some things were meant to remain frozen".Fair SF/Horror which owes a debt to The Thing. 5.5/10

A group of college students wanting to study the effects of global warming find themselves aboard a massive fishing trawler with Captain Graff (Lance Henriksen) and his crew made up of crude malcontents. Something very mysterious is discovered deep below the surface in the icy Bering Sea. When brought up it is judged to be a failed Russian space probe, when thawed out bio-hazard hell is released. Locked in the ice for three decades are rapidly mutating organisms that create a creature that enjoys playing with its nourishment. Terror, suspense, chomp, chomp, goo, guts and gore. Low budget fun.The cast also features: Camille Balsamo, Giovonnie Samuels, Reid Culloms, Milla Bjorn, Michael Estime, Matt Winston and Jason Speer.

Put very simply, this is a story heavily influenced by 'The Thing (1982)' featuring Lance Henrikson and series of special effects refreshingly untouched by CGI. To that end, the monstrous and monsters look pleasingly 1980s in style. That's not to say 'old school effects' are unimpressive: although slightly 'cheesy', they are powerful in scale and charmingly gooey. Also, such moments are joyfully free of the 'cartoony' aspect of computer generated effects. Director and writer Alec Gillis seems so proficient that it is something of a surprise he chose to limit his resources to a story with such obvious inspiration.As you may expect, infighting amongst the group – many of whom have their own agendas – provides some drama when the monsters are otherwise engaged. As always, Henrikson – playing deadpan Graff – is a mighty presence. He seems to have made his professional home in films like this, and thrives in them.

In one sense, this is a special case. In another, it deserves the same critical treatment as everything else. Low-budget, independently- produced movies need to compete on the same playing field as the big stuff. We don't want Kickstarter funding to become an excuse. On the other hand, some of the crueler reviews have, I think, a rather rose- tinted view of what 80s creature features were really like. They weren't all Aliens. That's magic in a bottle, and it isn't available to order for any amount of money - or Hollywood would be able to buy it, which it's becoming increasingly clear they can't.So, with these mixed views in mind, I rather liked Harbinger Down. If it sets out to avoid becoming saturated in embarrassing CGI, it succeeds, but naturally more is required than that. The performances are fine, given the painfully thin script - people knocking the actors need to consider the writing they've been given. The script is perhaps most kindly described as functional, and barely so. Henriksen is, of course, a massively experienced guy, and always a pleasure. The cinematography is absolutely rock-solid and a great advertisement for both Benjamin L. Brown and the staggeringly low-cost camera it was shot on. Both the pictures and Christopher Drake's score, and of course the creature effects, elevate the film way, way above the depths to which many low- budget sci-fi movies fall.So let's not be too harsh on Harbinger Down. Behind-the-scenes shots suggest that the creature effects could have been made more of on screen, a fair criticism that's been raised before, and the script is a letdown. But again, it's a genre creature feature. For a bit more creature and a bit more story and characterization it could have been better, but on the off-chance that some sort of renaissance of the golden age of sci-fi and fantasy filmmaking can be launched from this movie, or movies like it, I'm enthusiastic. If Blomkamp does get to do Alien 5, he'd be an idiot not to involve Woodruff and Gillis.