THE HARBINGER movie poster | ©2022 Screen Media

Rating: PG-13
Stars: Will Klipstine, Amanda MacDonald, Madelaine McGraw, Irene Bedard, Charles Hubbell, Vincent Duvall, Steve Monroe, Bruce Bohne
Writers: Amy Mills & Will Klipstine
Director: Will Klipstine
Distributor: Screen Media Films
Release Date: September 2, 2022

To judge by a statement in the end credits, there are good intentions behind the scenes of THE HARBINGER. The production employed a good number of Native Americans, veterans, and survivors of domestic abuse.

THE HARBINGER’s script, by Amy Mills & Will Klipstine, also has an intriguing concept. What if faith and supernatural beliefs only work in the areas where they originate? In other words, what if the Christian Devil exists but has no power on indigenous land?

Actually, THE HARBINGER has a lot of concepts – so many, in fact, that well before the conclusion, most viewers will have lost the desire and/or ability to follow them. Instead, we may marvel at the sheer amount that accumulate. It’s like a D&D session where the Dungeon Master keeps making up new rules so that the game can continue.

At the outside, an opening credit defines “harbinger” as a noun, “A person or thing that signals the coming of something, or someone.”

We then see a man hang himself in his home office. Another man – we’ll soon learn this is Daniel Snyder (co-writer Klipstine, who also directed) – enters. He seems unsurprised by the body, retrieves an object left on the floor, and leaves.

At the funeral for the dead man, Daniel is with his wife Theresa (Amanda MacDonald) and their young daughter Rosalie (Madeleine McGraw).

We realize quickly that we’re meeting the Snyder family mid-crisis. There is something very wrong with the unsmiling Rosalie. We know it wasn’t always this way. Sunny flashbacks show Rosalie as a happy little girl.

Daniel’s job dictates a family move from Des Moines to the small town of Fort Heraldson. With a population of a little over five thousand, Fort Heraldson is a pleasant-looking upper-middle-class bedroom community.

The Snyders soon learn that the neighbors are welcoming, but also nosy, judgmental, and bigoted. All of them warn the Snyders to stay away from the nearby indigenous reservation.

Daniel, however, thinks that the seer Floating Hawk (Irene Bedard) may be able to help Rosalie. Floating Hawk isn’t against aiding Daniel, although she says she can’t “see” all of him. Floating Hawk is also adamant that Rosalie herself stay off reservation land.

The set-up is decent, as far as it goes. So are the ominous aspects of Rosalie, who is violent and prone to comments so dark as to be (perhaps unintentionally) amusing. McGraw, so memorable in THE BLACK PHONE, is very good, performing with nuance and commitment.

But there’s no getting around all those piling-up plot pieces. Additionally, there are times when Daniel and Theresa are remarkably slow on the uptake. There are also some big theological questions (the film’s definition of suicide is arguable).

As much as Native American sovereignty and lore are given genuine respect here, we only get one main Native American character, Floating Hawk. And we learn almost nothing about Floating Hawk, except that she’s very invested in helping her new white acquaintance. It’s not the biggest problem in THE HARBINGER, but it’s an old trope to have in a new movie.

THE HARBINGER is diverting in its way, but the way it handles exposition makes for a very unwieldy bunch of signals.

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