We just got word that a very cool sounding flick that utilizes and celebrates practical creature effects called HARBINGER DOWN just reached its funding goal and, even better, genre icon Lance Henriksen is set to star.
In the spirit of sci-fi/horror classics ALIEN and THE THING, HARBINGER DOWN is a tense, claustrophobic full-length creature film that will feature only practical Animatronic and Makeup Effects and is coming at us from the folks at Amalgamated Dynamics. You may not recognize Amalgamated Dynamics by name, but you'll certainly recognize the major movies the company has worked on since its inception in the late 80s: TREMORS, STARSHIP TROOPERS, SPIDER-MAN, ZODIAC and many more. They also did tons of work on the 2011 remake of John Carpenter's THE THING, but almost all of their practical effects were unceremoniously replaced by CGI before the film hit theaters.
Directed by veteran FX designer Alex Gillis, HARBINGER DOWN goes like this:
The story follows a group of grad students who board a ship called the Harbinger to study the effects of global warming on a pod of Orcas in the Bering Sea. While churning through the ice, the crew discovers a recently thawed piece of old Soviet space wreckage that could end up leading to their demise. The Russians had sent tiny resilient animals into space to test the effects of radiation, and the result is a host of mutated creatures frozen in the ice for decades…until now. When flight is not an option, the fight is more desperate."
Now this sounds like it has the potential to be a completely kickass horror thriller. And having the great Lance Henriksen onboard to star certainly makes it more intriguing.
We'll keep you posted on news regarding HARBINGER DOWN as it comes our way.