Funereal Plots

Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Strange Harvest

Writer/Director: Stuart Ortiz

A mockumentary, particularly one that isn’t a comedy, stands or falls on the verisimilitude of its dialogue and on the performances of its actors. Strange Harvest, which is meant to ape a Netflix-style serial killer documentary, is fitfully successful in seeming like it might be the genuine article—the establishing shots, the tone, the stock footage, the reproduction of television news and its chyrons—all are first rate. But here and there it gets sloppy as far as what the interviewees—experts, cops, men-on-the-street—say, and the acting isn’t always quite up to par.

My wife and I are addicted to true crime documentaries. I found myself wondering whether she’d buy it if I told her it was real. I suspect it’d fail the smell test fairly quickly.

The premise: two detectives recount the investigation of a killer whose crimes are elaborately staged and gruesome, yet bereft of DNA or fingerprints, and which appear to have occult intent, a suspicion which is borne out by handwritten notes send to police by the killer who, of course, knows things about the crimes that weren’t made public.

Mr. Shiny (great name!), the killer, is seen only in grainy photographs, but his gory work is shown in exquisite detail, and some of the murder scenes look strikingly real. The corpses, in other words, look like corpses. If you hunt down the DVD of the 2003 movie Wonderland, a crime drama based on real killings, and look at the extras, you’ll see actual crime scene footage, and you’ll surely appreciate how Ortiz pulls it off here.

After an is-that-all-there-is climax, the dénouement of Strange Harvest meanders a while before it fizzles out, and a post-credits scene adds little except confirmation of a supernatural element that was already a given. Still, Strange Harvest is a solid movie, entertaining, smart, and is worthy of the found-footage format. Worth your time.