Strange Harvest Review
Mockumentary is a tough nut to crack, even more so when it’s bolted onto the horror genre. Adjacent to the more common found footage horror movie, a mockumentary must inherently bypass the rational part of the brain to convince the audience that it’s been ripped from reality. One can compare the likes of Lake Mungo, quite possibly the finest mocku-horror of its kind, with the found footage stylistics of The Blair Witch Project: the former derives its power from its prosaic air of mundanity, the latter from an aesthetically stylised sense of growing hysteria (aided admittedly by a groundbreaking marketing campaign).
New chiller Strange Harvest is a fine, creepy example of mocku-horror: the air of verisimilitude in both the performances and visual language is well-observed enough that we can immerse ourselves in its fictional projection of a real-life crime. Those who refuse to make a pact with the film’s approach, essentially seeing it as a fantasy from the get-go, may also find themselves enveloped by the intricate, layered menace of the storyline.
We’re introduced to two California police officers who are recounting the most horrific case of their respective careers. So far, so Zodiac, and many comparisons to David Fincher‘s serial killer masterpiece rear their head throughout Strange Harvest, not least the film’s search for an elusive criminal in California. One might describe this film as COPS goes to hell, beginning when an infamous spree murderer is said to have emerged from anonymity after several years’ absence.
Our two detectives relay, via sober talking heads interviews, the meandering path toward capturing the maniac who dubs himself ‘Mr. Shiny’. The recap of an especially horrible family murder kicks off proceedings, made all the more mysterious by the culprit’s escape and a cryptic, possibly occult, symbol painted on the ceiling in the victims’ blood. Before long, more and more victims of different ages, genders, and backgrounds start turning up amid the Inland Empire region of California, all apparently unrelated, all of whom have been executed in grisly, seemingly occult fashion.
Then the killer starts leaving cryptic cyphers for the beleaguered detectives, and things get really weird. The slow-burning placidity of the interview segments (Peter Zizzo and Terri Apple as the put-upon law enforcement officers are superb) helps ground the outlandish details of the crimes themselves, interspersed with which are disturbing outbursts of found footage that are bound to cause a frisson. This is a movie in which the boogeyman’s reputation precedes him, but the snatch-and-grab visuals reveal are no less terrifying. The aesthetic of the movie really helps amplify the sense of conviction: the overwrought, almost hysterical presentation in the camerawork and editing is a fine distillation of what one usually finds in the typical American true crime exposé.
This is a difficult film to review, as one must inherently embrace its fantastical constructs to outline the plot and its impact, potentially undercutting any semblance of reality it sets out to achieve. Nevertheless, the amount of twists and turns that follow will have horror fans gasping, including the suggestion of Lovecraftian cosmology in its later stages. Director Stuart Ortiz walks a fine line here and judges it well: on the cusp of veering too far into supernatural phenomena, he instead disquiets the audience by allowing us to make up our own minds. As Lovecraft himself said, there’s no stronger fear than the fear of the unknown.
It’s also unexpectedly poignant: not unlike Zodiac, we get a sense of the pyrrhic victory that comes with devoting one’s career to capturing a dangerous individual. This helps the movie cut through and resonate more strongly than a mere smoke-and-mirrors mockumentary imitation: Strange Harvest is rooted in a strong sense of empathy, which in hindsight serves to throw its manifest horrors and shocks into even sharper relief.
★★★★
On digital download from October 27th / Peter Zizzo, Terri Apple, Andy Lauer / Dir: Stuart Ortiz / Vertigo Releasing / 18
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