Mixing the creeping faux true crime chills of The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007) with hearty daubs of compelling supernatural mythos, Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire is an impressive, engrossing, and downright scary instant found-footage/pseudo-doc horror classic from writer/director Stuart Ortiz.
Told in a docu-series format, Strange Harvest uncovers the weird tale of Mr. Shiny, a masked murderer responsible for a spate of ritualistic deaths located in and around San Bernardino, California, stretching back to the early ‘90s. Through news reports, still photos, the killer’s own letters, archival videos, and interviews with detectives Joe Kirby (Peter Zizzo) and Alexis Taylor (Terri Apple) as well as various others, the film takes viewers into the mind of a mysterious killer and the occult beliefs he may be killing for.
Ortiz brings the skills he sharpened on Grave Encounters (2011) and its sequel to bear here, gifting lovers of true crime a faux documentary that’s utterly convincing in its execution. The writer/director is obviously well acquainted with the type of storytelling he’s aping; from editing to scoring, performances, to pacing, Strange Harvest feels like a project lifted from any of our most popular streaming services with programming catering to a hungry crowd of My Favorite Murder-listening soccer moms and serial killer addicted horror fans alike. It can’t be overstated how much this believability is reliant on the performances, specifically Zizzo and Apple, who sink into their roles so seamlessly it’s easy to forget you’re watching actors, not real people. Zizzo has a slightly stilted, deer-in-the-headlights delivery that rings true for a lawman uncomfortable in front of the cameras, while Apple is a scene-stealer as a seen-it-all spitfire as irritated to be interviewed as she is thrilled to have an audience.
Though Strange Harvest may not appeal to those who are less supernaturally interested, Ortiz has created an ambiguous but gripping mythology that he unfurls throughout the runtime involving mysterious symbols, planetary alignments, leeches (so many leeches), and doomsday prophecies. Like the film’s closest stylistic contemporary, Dutch Marich’s Horror in the High Desert series, Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire teases a bigger world that demands to be explored, and, seeing as Ortiz’s bone-chilling effort is easily the found footage horror standout of 2024, there’s no doubt that we’ll get our wish.
Movie Score: 4/5
Rocco T. Thompson is a writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. His work is frequently featured in Rue Morgue where he penned the cover story for the magazine's first ever Queer Fear special issue, and he served as producer for In Search of Darkness: Part III, the final installment in the popular ‘80s horror documentary series.
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