Strange Harvest (dir. Stuart Ortiz)
By: Dave Hughes
True crime documentaries have become as popular as the biggest films on any streaming platform like Netflix, Hulu or Video on Demand. Their rise has been fueled by word of mouth and easy access to content. Recently, the horror genre has embraced this style, creating fictional stories that imitate true crime documentaries covering deeply disturbing tales. Stuart Ortiz’s Strange Harvest leans into the mockumentary style format, at times nailing the illusion of reality but just as often stumbling over its own ambition.
Strange Harvest tells the story of a notorious serial killer known as Mr. Shiny, who terrorized California’s Inland Empire,a sprawling area of suburbs and desert communities between Los Angeles and Palm Springs, during the 1990s and 2000’s.With alleged ties to the occult and no clean connection to any of his victims, Mr. Shiny leaves both the police and the community grasping for answers and clarity. The film presents the case through the perspective of the two detectives using a mix of police body cams, interviews and news reports. It’s a smart setup for a found footage mockumentary and lends credence to the believability of what the viewer is seeing.
Mr. Shiny’s kills in this film are some of the most brutal imaginable. It is clear that Director Stuart Ortiz drew inspiration from films like David Fincher’s Se7en(1995) in terms of the graphic nature of the crimes and John Erick Dowdle’s The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007) in their shock value. Each murder is crafted to make the viewer feel uncomfortable, not simply to shock them. The aftermath becomes a grotesque still life that lingers long after the detectives and the viewing audience have left the scene. Ortiz’s choice to reveal the aftermath of these crimes, rather than showing them as they happen, proves effective and leaves the viewer just as stunned as the detectives who uncover the scene.
The documentary-style approach in Strange Harvest is both rewarding and frustrating for the viewer as the film evolves. While the format creates a strong sense of realism, the pacing feels disjointed with many starts and stops. The film opens with a captivating and grisly homicide scene that immediately draws the viewer in, but the momentum begins to falter shortly after. A particularly difficult section takes place in the middle where the film focuses on Mr. Shiny and his travels throughout the world. The international detour drains the film of momentum. Tension and build up gives way and leaves the audience with the question if the time spent watching the film was worth it.
To make a documentary format effective, the audience has to believe the individuals interviewed and discussing the events. Strange Harvest features many people in that role throughout the film. Particularly creepy is the performance of Mr. Shiny by Jesse J Clarkson (V/H/S Beyond). Clarkson’s looming presence and long looks into the camera is sure to make audiences uncomfortable. While many of these performances do feel natural, others miss the mark and feel forced and read off a cue card off screen. These performances undercut the serious tone of the film and often take away from the realistic approach that this film desperately tries to obtain. Every time a performance is read off a cue card, the spell of believability is broken. The film works so hard to build credibility but it is quickly shattered with performances that do not fit in.
Target Score: 5.5/10 Strange Harvest has potential with its grisly kills and mockumentary format, but uneven pacing and unconvincing performances keep it from reaching its full potential. What could have been a chilling experiment ends up a flawed curiosity.