Review #209: Harpoon (2019)

This review was originally written in 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #64: Harpoon (2019)

Harpoon is a movie about three friends who go out on a day cruise on a yacht in the ocean, when things go wrong. Tensions flare and secrets come to light when they get stranded with no food or water and no hope of rescue, and it sounds like history- and fiction- may end up repeating itself.

This is a strange film and it took me a while before I could say whether I liked it or not. The whole film (but mainly the first half hour) suffers from some SEVERE tonal whiplash, as the subject matter eventually becomes incredibly bleak and terrifying but for the first portion of the film feels like a quirky dark comedy (complete with frequent narrations from well-known comic actor Brett Gelman). So not being able to tell whether I'm supposed to be laughing at the antics on screen, coupled with the fact that the first few scenes seem hellbent on making sure you hate all three of the principal characters, really made it difficult to get into the right kind of mindset. If the movie kept up the quirkiness and slapstick throughout the film, that would be one thing, but it really, REALLY doesn't. There's a little bit of comic relief but the entire rest of the movie feels pretty dark and depressing.

Once I could tell what kind of experience I was in for, I'd say this movie was... fine. I couldn't ever really call it "bad", I would even recommend it to someone who hasn't seen it, but I don't plan on ever watching it again myself. There wasn't even much I would complain about (apart from the tone whiplash I mentioned), but one thing I think is missing ties into the ending. Without spoiling much, I find it really odd that the film jumps five days ahead (and then passes another day before the credits roll) and it seems that during this entire span of six days, with nothing to pass the time, nobody bothered to investigate why the boat couldn't start? It would have been very easy to show the characters look at the fusebox, and even have them throw their hands up and say, "I don't know what I'm even looking at" or "My dad pays a guy to keep this thing running, so I don't know the first thing about how the engine works" or whatever, but instead the movie has the location of the fuse box be a complete secret to all but one of the characters until the climax of the film. While it's a nice little twist when it does come into play, it really feels weird if you put even a bit of thought into it.

All in all this is a solid film for what it's trying to do, I just wish it could have settled on a tone a bit faster.

Overall Rating: 6/10 Hidden Oreos

Interesting IMDB Trivia: "In the credits the Motion Picture Production Code is 888888, that number was made up and not approved by the MPAA."