This Horror Movie Doesn’t Get the Credit It Deserves For Practical Effects

The Big Picture

• The 2011 remake of
  The Thing
  failed to recreate the magic of the original, relying on CGI over practical effects.
• Amalgamated Dynamics funded
  Harbinger Down
  after CGI covered their practical effects in major studio films.
• Harbinger Down
  is a practical effects love letter to
  The Thing
  , with gross creature designs reminiscent of 80s horror.

1982’s The Thing—a remake of The Thing From Another World three decades earlier—is regarded as one of the best horror movies ever made, thanks to the direction of John Carpenter and the jaw-dropping practical effects created by Rob Bottin. While the 1951 original succeeded by hiding its alien monster, Carpenter’s version scared audiences by putting the creature designs in the forefront.

It was unlike anything moviegoers had ever seen, and with that in mind, when the prequel of The Thing prequel was created in 2011, Universal Studios brought in Amalgamated Dynamics (ADI) to create the practical effects. Well, they were brought in only to have their work erased as the final film covered up the alien with disappointing-looking CGI. Frustrated by this decision, ADI decided to fund their own independent horror film, a tribute to The Thing called Harbinger Down, which would use only practical effects, showing what they could do when given the chance.

The 2011 Version of ‘The Thing’ Had Its Practical Effects Covered up With CGI

The 2011 The Thing—which was a prequel to John Carpenter’s film—had the heavy task of trying to recreate the magic of an all-time classic. Being that that was impossible, the finished product was a failure. It only has a 34% favorability rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and amassed a measly $16 million at the domestic box office on a $38 million budget. Although stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton held their own and kept the movie afloat, The Thing felt like a cheap imitation (pun intended), relying too much on jump scares instead of genuine tension.

Jump scares can work when done correctly if what we’re shown is something to genuinely be scared of. The multiple alien designs from Carpenter’s The Thing are to be feared because we never know what shockingly disturbing visual we’re going to get hit with next. The prequel tries to give us those same twisted sort of designs, but instead of being scary, they’re silly, as almost everything is covered up by CGI. Instead of feeling like a lifelike impossibility, the monsters look like one-dimensional cartoons. It’s something that didn’t have to happen either, as Amalgamated Dynamics (ADI) had been brought in to painstakingly create practical effects, only for Universal to decide to cover it all up.

Amalgamated Dynamics Helped To Create ‘Harbinger Down’

This wasn’t the first time ADI had dealt with practical effects being replaced by the convenience of digital imagery. ADI was also hired to create vampire monsters in the Ridley Scott version of I Am Legend that never came to be, but when the Will Smith-starring I Am Legend came out in 2007, the vampires were made of bad looking CGI. I Am Legend is a fine movie until the vampires show up, but the unrealistic appearance of the monsters takes the viewer out of the experience. The released photos of the vampires ADI created for Ridley Scott show monsters that are absolutely terrifying.

Frustrated by big studios, ADI founder, Alec Gillis, decided that he’d make his own horror movie using only practical effects. He started his own Kickstarter campaign, reaching his goal of $350,000 in contributions. And how did they do it? Gillis told SciFiNow that his studio knew that fans of The Thing had to be wondering how badly ADI messed up to have their practical effects replaced with CGI, so they decided to put a five-minute video on YouTube displaying their impressive creations. After the positive fan response, Gillis decided to release videos for their test makeup for the Green Goblin of 2002’s Spider-Man and I Am Legend. When told that practical effects were actually cheaper than CGI, many fans urged Gillis to start a crowd-funded campaign for a film. Alec Gillis did just that. As he told SciFiNow:

“When I say that Kickstarter has democratised filmmaking, part of that is that it’s removed the gate keepers. There are two things that we need to get around: one, we need to get around the fact that gigantic budgets bring gatekeepers with them, who are there to protect that budget from being spent in ways that the studio disagrees with. If you can do something with a lower budget, you remove some of those gatekeepers. The other thing is, you don’t have to go to the people who own the money and therefore have a say in which techniques you put on screen.”

‘Harbinger Down’s Practical Effects Are the Best Part of the Film

Harbinger Down, released in the summer of 2015, is an obvious love letter to The Thing; Imagine that film on a boat, and you’re headed in the right direction. It revolves around grad students on the Harbinger, a trawler in the Bering Sea who, instead of finding a crashed alien spaceship in the ice, find a crashed Soviet spaceship in ice. Without spoiling it, thawing the spaceship turns out to be a bad idea. Let the shapeshifting grossness begin! Starring horror icon, Lance Henriksen, who knows a thing or two about working with practical effects thanks to his roles in Aliens and Pumpkinhead, Harbinger Down is not on the level of The Thing. It feels like the direct-to-video movie that it is, with bad acting, cringey dialogue, and a thin plot. It comes off as a playground for ADI to show what they can do while everything else suffers.

Still, if you love 1980s monster movies, Harbinger Down takes you back to an era where effort and passion were put into those creations, that is, before major studios took control and decided that convenience was what mattered most. ADI’s Kickstarter campaign promised that they would rely only on makeup, stop-motion, and miniatures to complete Harbinger Down, with digital effects only being used to erase wires. They made sure to declare, “There will be NO digitally animated Creatures in this film.” ADI kept that promise. The monsters in Harbinger Down look like the gross concoctions you’d see in The Thing, Alien, or the remake of The Blob, with human beings plastered into goo on walls, limbs coming together into twisted madness, blobs hiding under a bed, and tentacles filled with teeth.

The plot of Harbinger Down might come off as a lesser version of better movies, but its flaws are actually endearing. This wasn’t a movie made by a big studio and a director with lots of experience, but a practical effects studio who loved horror and monsters. They were fans who wanted to make a movie for other fans. While not everything works, the passion and love put into every stomach-churning detail will make lovers of horror smile. In a world of bad CGI and green screens everywhere, seeing a man with a real-looking wormy thing spurting out of his butt is what we need more of.

Harbinger Down is available to watch on Tubi in the U.S.

Watch on Tubi