Intensity 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Stuart Ortiz
Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire documents a string of unsolved grisly murders in California’s Inland Empire. This faux documentary is at once both sensational and plausible, treated as a real account of a heinous cosmically influenced serial killing spree. This film is hugely disturbing and is coated with a thick layer of bloody possible sauce.
It is my goal with Strange Harvest to take the audience on a rollercoaster ride unlike any they’ve gone on before. I don’t pull any punches with the film and attempt to present a spooky true-crime story as convincingly – and disturbingly – as possible. I hope people think it’s real. I want to raise the bar for suspension of disbelief.
Stuart Ortiz
Some of my Scariest Things chat group members raved about Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire, which is working its way through the festival circuit. I was anxious to understand what all the buzz was about. So, I was thrilled when the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival scheduled this movie. It would receive the Audience Choice Award at that festival, which was well deserved.
The movie took an existing trope, the true-crime documentaries like John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise, The Thin Blue Line, Beware the Slenderman, and Jeffrey Dahmer: Mind of a Monster, and created a faux documentary based on those familiar themes. I cannot recall another film quite like this, despite its familiar source material. There is a methodology for making a great true-crime documentary, and the producers of this film had it pegged.
This matter-of-fact account is told through the memories of two detectives, Kirby and Taylor. Their pursuit of the killer is covered in thrilling detail. It is so well crafted, that it could easily pass for a true, if amazing tale.
The Cast Of Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire
- Peter Zizzo plays the retired Detective Joe Kirby, a cop assigned to a series of brutal murders in the inland empire. The murders haunt him to this day.
- Terri Apple plays Detective Alexis “Lexi” Taylor, Kirby’s partner. She is stable and focused on the case.
- Jessee J. Clarkson plays Leslie Sykes a.k.a. Mr. Shiny, the Inland Empire serial killer.
- David Hemphill plays Glen Sandweiss, a badly scarred survivor of one of Mr. Shiny’s attacks.
- Andy Lauer plays Jared Kelly, a man who used to know Leslie Sykes.
- Matthew Peschio plays Victor Shamaz, a local lowlife and an early suspect.
- Dawsyn Eubanks plays Victoria Macenroe, one of Mr. Shiny’s victims.
- Heath Harper plays Jim Macenroe, Victoria’s grieving father
- Coleen Tutton plays April Macenroe, Victoria’s grieving mother.
- Allen Marsh plays Jonas Eckhard, an antiquarian who owned a musty old tome that Mr. Shiny wanted.
- LA Williams plays Prof. Joseph E. Terry, a Professor of Astronomy at Cal Tech.
- Matthew M. Garcia plays Saroj Mallick, a security guard witness to one of Mr. Shiny’s murders.
- Travis Wolfe Sr. Plays Officer Carter Pearce a responding officer and survivor.
A Brief Synopsis of Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire
The Inland Empire is a huge suburban region in Southern California, formed by the sprawling communities of San Bernadino, Riverside, and Fontana. This area northeast of Los Angeles usually stays out of the national headlines. Perhaps this allowed a string of grisly murders to go largely unnoticed. We are introduced to a crime scene where the Sheridan family had been abducted and killed in their gated community home. Their bodies were exsanguinated after being duct-taped to their dining room chairs. A cryptic symbol was left at the scene, identifying it as the return of a serial killer. He had previously committed a series of three murders with a ritualistic aspect to them. The victims were all mutilated, with organs removed, but no motive or connection.
That was until the police received a hand-scrawled letter claiming details that only the killer would know. The case went cold for over a decade, without the detectives getting close. The letter was signed with the symbol found at the Sheridan’s home, and it included a name: Mr. Shiny. The killer was taunting the detectives. The killer was building momentum, with detectives Kirby and Taylor acquiring small clues, but not enough to catch up to Mr. Shiny, who was elusive and always maintained a step ahead.
The “documentary” stays with the detectives as the body count grows, and the trail of clues finally suggests that something other-worldly has been driving Mr. Shiny in his towards a kill total of thirteen people to satisfy a mysterious ritual. These prophetic consequences are both unknown and potentially catastrophic.
Evaluation of Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire
The power of this “documentary” is the authenticity. It has such a matter-of-fact quasi-journalism feel that you forget you are watching a piece of fiction. More so than any film since The Blair Witch Project in 1999, this movie drew me into the possibility that this was REAL. The cosmic and astrological components of the film’s third act snapped me back in.
The editing and format of Strange Harvest played a huge role in anchoring the plot. It utilized a mix of the true-crime playbook delivery methods. The most convincing component of the delivery was the interviews. A large cast of unfamiliar faces breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the “documentarians”. It all feels wholly natural. Several media methods bolster the interviews: police body cam footage, stationary security camera recordings, grainy TV coverage, forensic still images, family portraits, and home video recordings. The presentation felt like evidence: gory, messy, and truly creepy evidence.
The clarity of the documentary interview’s high-definition recordings stood in stark and appropriate contrast to the roughly filmed found footage imagery, further cementing the believability. The music and the narration also played a huge part in rounding out the package.
Peter Zisso and Terri Apple felt like real hard-bitten detectives. They were our guides to the crimes. Their admissions of being tricked, frustrated, and exasperated by the efforts to get justice were honestly portrayed. Moreover, they did not come across as actors.
To call this a mockumentary would be unfair. This is in a unique class.
CONCLUSION
Stuart Ortiz is no stranger to found footage movies, having cut his teeth on Grave Encounters (2012). Like The Blair Witch Project, the media for this film has been playing up that these events might have actually happened. The Tiger King on Netflix inspired Ortiz as a reference point. It was so outrageous, and yet completely true. By using the TV trappings of the true-crime documentary he created a bridge to audience expectations. It worked amazingly well.
I do appreciate that by the end of the film, there is enough ambiguity from the body of evidence presented that even the most amazing elements could be true… in a cryptid delivery that the conspiracy theory producers would like you to believe. By bringing in the occult elements, this film adds additional shine to a mere serial killer mystery.
The film is in the middle of a festival run, and it does not carry an MPAA Rating. It is quite gory and highly disturbing. This is not proper viewing for younger children, and because of its realism, teenagers should be properly prepared that this is a work of fiction. It is 100% nightmare fuel if you believe Mr. Shiny is out there. The mere suggestion that this killer was real is what keeps suburbanites up at night.
I am curious if this film starts a trend. If so, it will be a high benchmark to clear. Pure genius!
Review by Eric Li
