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.

A handful of folks on a crabbing vessel in the middle of the ocean find themselves in considerable jeopardy when a lethal shape-shifting organism gets lose on board the ship.

Writer/director Alec Gillis keeps the familiar, but still enjoyable and engrossing story moving along at a brisk pace, maintains a grimly serious tone throughout, brings a right-on mean'n'lean no-nonsense sensibility to the premise, generates a good deal of tension, and makes nice use of the cramped claustrophobic setting. The always excellent Lance Henriksen anchors the movie with his trademark rock-solid professional presence as gruff skipper Graff. The rest of the cast for the most part also acquit themselves well, with especially praiseworthy contributions from Camille Balsamo as the perky Sadie, Matt Winston as obnoxious pompous jerk Stephen, Winston James Francis as amiable giant Guillaume, Milla Bjorn as the scrappy Svet, and Edwin H. Bravo as the superstitious Atka. The funky old school practical f/x are quite impressive and convincing. Benjamin L. Brown's crisp widescreen cinematography provides a neat polished look. Christopher Drake's spirited shivery score hits the stirring spot. A fun flick.

Well, chances are that if you enjoyed Carpenter's "The Thing" from 1982 or even the 2011 remake, then you will find some enjoyment in the 2015 movie "Harbinger Down" from writer and director Alec Gillis as well.

I will say that I actually enjoyed "Harbinger Down", though this wasn't exactly a diamond in the long line of cinema. Sure, this was enjoyable and watchable, but the movie was just too much akin to "The Thing" actually. And that made the movie suffer a bit.

The concept of "Harbinger Down" definitely is interesting, and the storyline definitely has some good aspects to it. But the overall movie just suffered from having 'borrowed' a bit too much from "The Thing".

One thing that "Harbinger Down" suffered from was having a fairly inadequate character gallery. By that I mean that the characters in the movie just weren't given much time to show any personalities, traits, etc. So if felt like you hardly knew the characters, and that resulted in when people got killed off by the alien organism, then you just shrugged, moved on and waited for the next one in line to be killed.

The storyline felt sort of rushed and lacking something crucial. The threat of the alien parasitic creature just wasn't overwhelming looming. And it seemed rather amazingly easy for the protagonists to overcome the creature.

"Harbinger Down" actually had quite a good ensemble of actors and actresses, with the likes of Lance Henriksen and Matt Winston. The actors and actresses were actually doing fairly good jobs with their characters, despite not really having much to work with from the script.

Visually then "Harbinger Down" was rather nice. There were a great amount of interesting special effects being utilized and used here. And for the majority of the time, then these practical effects were quite good. Just a shame that some of the scenes were obscured by lack of lighting or with some shoddy camera work.

I was going to rate "Harbinger Down" a six out of ten stars, but I am downing - pardon the pun - it to a five out of ten, because it just felt like writer and director Alec Gillis was doing too much of a copy and paste of John Carpenter's classic movie. If you ever thought to yourself 'what if they made a watered down light version of "The Thing", then you have this movie'.