America’s true crime phenomenon is smartly exploited in this clever and often shocking twist on the mockumentary format.
★★★★☆
The public take a certain comfort and rubbernecking pleasure from stories of serial killers, twisty murders and unsolved cases. You only need to look at some of the most popular true crime podcasts from Crime Junkie or My Favourite Murder to realise this is a morbid obsession to which humans are drawn.True crime is an adrenaline shot in the arm for the audience, but shaky moral structures often immortalise perpetrators and treat their victims like footnotes.
Strange Harvest is the new film from writer-director Stuart Oritz, one of the forces behind cult found footage horror hit Grave Encounters (2011). He uses a similar method and aesthetic here but in a much more thrillingly depraved register. The film follows the baffling investigation of murders from 1995 to 2010 committed by a serial killer known simply as “Mr Shiny”. Shiny is ritualistic in his work and constantly nods at a future time when his work will be “complete”.
Through talking heads, Detective Joe Kirby (Peter Zizzo) and Detective Lexi Taylor (Terri Apple) tell us the stories behind each sadistic murder. While the performances from a large ensemble cast are often amateurish, the true crime set up lets the film get away with it. The actors feel like non-actors, but that’s the point. Stock evidence photographs, police interviews, body cam footage and more are woven into the narrative to create a meaty and twisty picture that keeps up the surprises until the credits roll. Some of the construction can feel cheap, but no detail is lingered on long enough for it to impact on overall enjoyment. The energy of the film never dissipates, and it’s credit to Ortiz how well he understands and executes genre thrills.
Mr Shiny has a simplistic design, but the nature of his murders and a creepy cosmic edge make him a horrific creation. He dons a thick, smooth semi-circle mask with three deep holes for his eyes and mouth–a quasi-Jason Voorhees with a boxcutter instead of an axe. He has a penchant for draining the blood of his victims, and a death involving a swimming pool full of leeches gets particularly under the skin. Shiny always leaves a cult adjacent symbol of a triangle with three lines and dots at each murder scene and scribbled on the provocative letters he gleefully uses to mock the detectives.
A lot of the film is made up of the detectives beating themselves up for not being able to come close to Shiny. He seems to have an otherworldly, methodical talent for pulling off each murder, but the looming sci-fi elements are never overdone or descend into silliness. There is just enough gritty, security camera, VHS-style low-budget scares to ground the film. Shiny feels like a real, uncontainable threat, and his presence leaves a lingering impact.
The Verdict
Strange Harvest is a cleverly constructed horror with a genuinely dread inducing story. It is, put simply, what so many films wish they could be: really, really scary.
Words by Oscar Aitchison
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