Frustrated by the fact that the practical effects created by their company are often undervalued by the studio system and sometimes replaced with CGI (most notably on the 2011 THE THING "premake"), the folks at Amalgamated Dynamics, who have brought us such creatures as Xenomorphs, Predators, and Graboids, decided to make their own independent monster movie featuring nothing but practical effects. They were able to do so with the aid of Kickstarter contributors, and the resulting film, entitled HARBINGER DOWN, is set to hit theatres and VOD tomorrow, August 7th, in the U.S. and Canada.
Written and directed by Alec Gillis and starring Lance Henriksen, Matt Winston, Camille Balsamo, and Giovonnie Samuels, HARBINGER DOWN tells the following story:
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 three decades, the creatures aren't about to give up the warmth of human companionship.
In preparation for the film's release, one final trailer has made its way online, and you can check it out below.
Clearly inspired by the likes of THE THING and ALIEN, HARBINGER DOWN looks awesome to me. I can't wait to watch it and see Amalgamated Dynamics' effects in action. I'm already impressed by the glimpses in the trailer.