Harbinger Down

A university research group charters the fishing trawler Harbinger to study how global warming affects a pod of orcas in the Bering Sea. The trip takes a different turn when the crew pulls a piece of thawed Soviet space wreckage from the water. The craft carried experiments on tardigrades, tiny animals able to endure extreme space radiation, and the surviving organisms have changed. The people on board are soon exposed to a mutating life form that has spent decades locked in ice and now seeks warmth, turning the expedition into a fight to stay alive.

Alec Gillis directed and wrote the film, which was produced by Camille Balsamo, Benjamin L. Brown and Hadeel Reda. Lance Henriksen plays the boat's commander, Graff, with Matt Winston as Stephen, Camille Balsamo as Sadie, Giovonnie Samuels as Ronelle, Winston James Francis as Big G and Morgana Ignis as the tardigrade creature. The creature effects work connects to the filmmakers' background in practical monster design, and the film runs a tight 82 minutes.

Released in August 2015, Harbinger Down met with modest audience scores: on IMDb it holds 4.6 out of 10 from roughly 7,500 votes, and on TMDB 4.5 out of 10 from about 230 votes. A critics' rating of 3.8 out of 10 from seven reviews sits a little below the audience figures. The small vote totals and low scores point to a genre title with limited reach rather than a broadly seen release.