Strange Harvest review – shocking horror expertly disguised as true crime | film

FOr for the first few minutes, this comes off like a true-crime documentary: establishing shots of the greater Los Angeles area, talking heads introduce themselves as police officers and friends of the victims, and we zoom into the list of handwritten names until one particular name fills the screen. All the tricks of the trade are in play here, and director Stuart Ortiz plays things fairly straight. In fact, it’s a mockumentary: not a parody but instead a horror film told using the format of a true crime documentary.

The story, centered around a masked killer named Mr. Shiny (if you think that name diminishes your credibility, don’t forget that there are real serial killers nicknamed the Happy Face Killer, Dating Game Killer, and Doodler), is practical enough. There are horrific details of the killings, and police officers talk about how the crimes were beyond imagination; There are sarcastic remarks from the killer. Trails where the track gets cold; Moments when the police almost caught Mr. Cheyne, only for him to slip through their fingers.

It’s a reminder of how comfortable these tropes have become, and because this is fiction, the moral questions raised by actual true crime films are a little off; There is no need to question whether the families of the victims are given proper respect here.

The only area where Strange Harvest is a bit disappointing is in its practical effects – prosthetics and weaponry. Everything else looks exactly as it should, but the shots and photographs of the bodies lack the same precise resolution. This wouldn’t matter in a goofy, straightforward horror movie, but here it comes off as trite and fake.

In fact, if you didn’t know you were watching fantasy stories, this will be your first real clue. The rest of the re-creation is very convincing – not least in the casting. Everyone here looks and acts exactly like the type of character they are playing. There are no preposterously beautiful police officers, or serial killers from Vanity Fair’s Rising Stars page.

Ignore the film’s marketing, which seems intent on positioning it as a run-of-the-mill compelling geek thriller; It’s a brilliant, meticulously realized spree of horror in the most popular genre of the 2020s.