Review: Harbinger (2026)

Low budget filmmaking can produce some impressive results, and there's a lot about this new horror from Shogun films to enjoy.

Released on blu-ray by 101 Films, Harbinger is one of those 'group of people get slaughtered in a house' type films, but they have added an original twist that the killings are being carried out by a possessed arcade machine called 'Harbinger', a variation on the Zoltar seaside 'tell your fortune' machines. 

Thus a group of documentary film makers descend on the house in which Julia (Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott) lived and was attacked five years previously by a serial killer Henry Decker (Peter Woodward). They bring Julia with them and intend to make a new episode of their series Spectre Investigates, fronted by Mike Craggs (Gary Webster). There to capture the proceedings are the sound girl April (Maisey Gee), her boyfriend cameraman Barney (Joseph Emms), make-up girl Kathryn (Anna Arthur), who Barney has been sleeping with and who has got pregnant, a supernatural expert Chris (Johnny Palmiero), and psychic Neil (Tony Sands). However the Harbinger machine doles out some tarot-like cards to each of them, and soon they realise that the figure in the machine is out to get them!

The film has a lot going for it. There's some smashing cinematograpy and drone work, some great colour palates inside the house (very inspired by Italian Giallo, and Dario Argento's film Suspiria in particular), and some great performances from the majority of the cast.

Where the film is let down is in the choice of the leading lady, and the script. Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott is sadly very wooden. Her scenes fall flat and it's a struggle to believe in her as Julia. This is just thrown into contrast by the rest of the cast who are universally excellent, and I wished one of them had ended up as being the 'final girl' here rather than Julia.

On the script front, the biggest issue for me was that the tarot cards given by the machine should have been predictors of how these people would meet their ends ... but while some hint at it, others seem to have no bearing at all. In a film of this type, where the whole 'point' is the killings, they should have been far more imaginative and clever ... far more like the sort of deaths presented in the Italian Giallos which this film tries (and mostly succeeds) in matching for visual style and flair. It's a shame that the stalking Harbinger figure seems to just resort to mostly strangling people and killing them with a knife.

There's some material in here which doesn't make a lot of sense. For example, if this house belonged to Julia, then why leave a valuable painting on the wall? She takes the 'job' with the film crew to earn some much-needed money to help her aged mother (an excellent scene with veteran actress Carole Ann Ford holding her own) - but why do that if there was money tied up in the old house which she obviously doesn't live in any more. I was also puzzled by the whole sequence of the young girl in the bath with the mask on ... it seemed out of place. The film also drags in places, which with six killings to execute (sorry) and only 90 minutes to do it all in, is something of an issue.

Overall Harbinger was enjoyable, but sadly the choice of lead makes it a harder watch and a lot less fun and action packed than it could have been.