By MICHAEL GINGOLD
One of the year’s best horror movies, THE HARBINGER (now on VOD from XYZ Films) spins a chilling supernatural drama out of the real-life tragedy of the pandemic. RUE MORGUE got words with actors Gabby Beans, Myles Walker, Cody Braverman, Laura Heisler and Jay Dunn about their involvement and experiences on this darkest of dramas.
Written and directed by Andy Mitton (who talks about it here), THE HARBINGER follows Monique (Beans) as she travels from the upstate New York house where she’s been sheltering with her brother Lyle (Walker) and father Ronald (Ray Anthony Thomas) to Queens in the midst of the outbreak. There, her friend Mavis (Emily Davis) is being plagued by nightmares about the Harbinger, a mysterious creature that soon finds its way into Monique’s mind as well. (See our review here.) Heisler plays a demonologist the leads consult on-line, while Braverman is a young boy named Edward who appears in nightmarish guise and Dunn (also a producer on the film) plays three parts–including the titular one. We talked to the cast following THE HARBINGER’s world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal. (You can read more about THE HARBINGER in RUE MORGUE #209, now on sale.)
How did you each become involved in THE HARBINGER?
GABBY BEANS (pictured below): I was lucky enough to be recommended by my castmate in the film, Emily Davis. As a result of that referral, I got sent the script, and I was completely engrossed by it. I read it from front to back, and I was so taken in by the story, and how it was a meditation on grief and collective trauma. I was genuinely scared when I went to bed after reading it, and I was like, “I have to do this!” So I sent in a tape, and luckily I got the chance to do it.
MYLES WALKER: My teacher, Jay Dunn, who taught me at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, e-mailed me telling me to send in a self-tape. He coached me through that self-tape, and we’re here!
LAURA HEISLER: I am married to the writer/director of the film, so I guess I slept my way… [Everyone laughs]
BEANS: Right to the top!
HEISLER: We originally met when I was an actor on Andy’s first feature YELLOWBRICKROAD, back in 2009. We had sort of a showmance that resulted in all of this, and I was lucky to work with him another time on a film called WE GO ON, which Jay was also in. And actually, anecdotally, our two kids are also briefly in the film. They play my kids on screen; when you’re in a pandemic, it helps to just have everybody actually there [laughs], able to play!
CODY BRAVERMAN: I auditioned for this, and my acting teacher Emily Bauer helped me with the audition, and I got on a call with Andy and Gabby, and I guess I booked it!
JAY DUNN: I went to school with Andy–that’s it! I did some of his earliest plays, and have been lucky enough to be on his radar since then. I play three roles in THE HARBINGER: Jason the landlord, the Harbinger, and the noseless person in the back of the truck who has a three-second creepy turnaround, and then runs and slams down the door to the trailer after Gabby, as Monique, jumps out of it.
Do you especially enjoy playing creature or special-makeup roles?
DUNN: Yeah; I teach movement as well as acting, so doing something like that without any lines is really fun. I do like creepy, and I honestly read that way sometimes [laughs], so…
The Harbinger is not a very active character, physically, so how did you create the sense of menace around him?
DUNN: I think the costume did a lot of that work. In a way, it’s the cliché of less is more; there wasn’t a whole lot to do, and working with Andy, I have a good sense of what something looks like when I’m behind it, just in terms of the mask. We went through so many iterations and trying things, and in a way, there was a sort of a geometry to the direction. When you’re in a mask, the foundation is quite technical, so it really is about tempo and angle, which sounds super-unsexy, but when applied, I think it’s very effective. You just have to know where the eyes are, where the mask is looking, and from there, the mask and the costume they put together did a lot of the menace work.
Cody, how was it for you playing a scary part in the film?
BRAVERMAN: When I started doing this character, I was having dreams about it, and I thought it was really cool. I’m this, like, creepy kid, and wearing that makeup was so fun. And the blood tasted like apples and burned my lips!
Can you each talk about how the movie related to your own pandemic experiences?
WALKER: I guess the need to be positive is something that resonated with me. These [negative thoughts], they can just swallow you whole, and I think a lot of that is dealt with in the film, and how important community is. Those are the two things.
BEANS: One thing that really struck me was the way it deals with loss, and not having structures in place to be able to really digest that loss, and witnessing people just sort of disappearing. I spent lockdown in New York the entire time, and I just remember being in the presence of more death than I could ever imagine in the past. So that was really strong, and then also the importance of relationships and family and closeness; that resonated with me too.
HEISLER: It was interesting, because I was living with the person who was creating it, and we were both experiencing this kind of dread–which we were all experiencing. We were in our little bubble with our two kids and a little bit of an extended family, and trying to keep the world feeling safe when we had young people who didn’t really understand. I saw Andy harnessing the isolation and dread that just permeated everything those first few months, and he went into kind of a dark space, like we all did. He was set to do something else, and then that was not going to be possible at that time, and there was a sense of grief about that. And then out of this, he started having this sort of fever dream that I was witnessing, where the story was coming to him, and he took the feeling we were already experiencing and put kind of a name to it. It’s about how fear is contagious, and the feeling that you can just be suddenly cut out of your life, or somebody else can be ripped out of your life. That’s what it felt like for us; that’s what it felt like watching everybody.
And then, taking care of our kids who were not in school, Andy was like, “I think I have a role for you!” And it was like, oh my God, this is amazing; a demonologist who has to deal with homeschooling at the same time was a delightful, hilarious idea inside this otherwise very dark story.
DUNN: Doing THE HARBINGER was like a lifeline for my creativity during the pandemic. It was not an easy time, and to be able to do something on this scale in such a crazy, still, scary period–doing a story about holes being punched in the universe by a virus and a demon–was actually the opposite of what that experience was. It was fulfilling, and I was so grateful. And to do it with these people and make those connections… I’ve never felt more connected than when I’m creating with people, or engaged collaboratively, and that’s what this was, and it was just like, “Yes!”
