Harbinger Down

Harbinger Down (also known as Inanimate in the United Kingdom) is a 2015 American independent science-fiction monster horror film written and directed by Alec Gillis and produced by Tom Woodruff Jr., the founders of the special effects company StudioADI, and starring Lance Henriksen. The film follows a group of graduate students aboard the crabbing trawler Harbinger who are studying the effects of global warming on a pod of Belugas in the Bering Sea. They recover a crashed Soviet spacecraft encased in a block of ice that is apparently virulently infected with mutated tardigrades, and after thawing, they are attacked by the mutated creatures. Funded by fan donations through Kickstarter, the film predominantly features practical creature effects created by ADI, including animatronics, prosthetic makeup, stop motion and miniature effects. Computer generated imagery was used only to enhance these effects (such as digitally erasing control wires and gimbals). Director Alec Gillis made the film in response to his special effects being replaced with CGI in The Thing (2011).