Leofwine_draca
I admit to having a huge love of John Carpenter's THE THING, a love which extends to the various THING rip-offs which have come out of the years. One of the cheaper of these is INANIMATE, a typical budget story in which a team of student researchers head into the frozen Bering Sea and discover a downed Russian spacecraft. It was originally launched as part of an experiment but has brought back something awful with it. The great thing about this predictable movie is the special effects, which look fantastic and were done without a single frame of CGI, something very rare in this day and age. The cast is nothing special, aside from reliable old-timer Lance Henriksen who actually gets plenty of screen time, which I was more than pleased about. The film is on the level of a typical B-movie but has enough suspense to see it through even if it is very familiar.
Michael O'Keefe
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.
mb1456
Harbinger Down reminded me strongly of The Thing released few years ago but not as well done or creepy. It has major actors like Lance Henriksen(from the Alien movies) as the captain of the trawler Harbinger but I think he'd have been kinda disappointed too with how the movie turned out. It starts well with the tension of things to come but post the alien creature attacks its first human victim in the ship, the scare factor is predictable and the jumps hardly startle you except in the initial scenes. The actors are OK. Save Lance, the rest of the performances are mostly average. For a horror thriller, the story had good potential - a large trawler in the icy seas with few graduate students, a professor and the trawler crew who accidentally discover a Soviet space vessel below the sea with a dead pilot in it...but the end result was above average at best. A one-time watch, with your soda and chips.
raptozilla
It wasn't a great movie, but it was enjoyable to watch and had some good moments. It was better than a lot of low budget stuff I've seen. What do you expect from a flick that's low budget? The acting wasn't that bad at all. There's a lot of action in the dark that really can't be seen, but that's to be expected in a movie that doesn't have a lot of cash to work with; it leaves a lot to your imagination. If you don't like using your imagination or low budget movies because they can't do what large budget movies do, then don't watch them; it's a simple as that. It is a lot like Carpenter's "The Thing" but there are some differences that allow it to stand on its own too. The creature on its own was pretty well done, but the attempt to make one of the characters up as the creature was a total flop. All things considered, I don't feel I wasted my time watching this movie like I have with some movies.
AD
