One of the late-night movies I caught at Fantastic Fest was a true crime mockumentary I knew nothing about. (My kind of carrying on.) I love mockumentary-style found-footage films. They give the plot the perfect structure for experts to insert context and producers to insert the terrifying footage they somehow got their hands on (possibly sent by a demon). Therefore, I don’t have to spend time guessing who edited the film and how it made its way to the audience.
While I’m no stranger to suspending my disbelief to stay engaged, mockumentaries make it easy for me to immerse myself. It’s easy to get lost in movies like Hell House LLC, Savageland, Butterfly Kisses, and Horror In The High Desert because they feel like tangible horrors. Overall, Strange Harvest: Occult Murder In The Inland Empire gave me that feeling: this could happen. That’s a strong enough case for watching it once it’s available. The film is a faux documentary about two detectives and their pursuit of a serial killer in California.
Faux True Crime
Strange Harvest: Occult Murder In The Inland Empire jolted me awake past midnight with a gruesome crime scene. From that point on, I needed to know who (or what) was behind such violent and dark crimes. The performances of Peter Zizzo and Terri Apple as the detectives complemented the feeling of realism. They felt like real people who made mistakes and were limited by their worldview. The detectives talked us through the discovery of the shocking crimes of seemingly one man.
As we learn more about the case, we realize that there’s something more sinister at play. The occult symbols and paranormal occurrences sprinkled across a true crime landscape kept me engaged all night. Stuart Ortiz does a great job of baking the strangeness into the realism so audience members have difficulty separating the two. It reminds me of how the paranormal occurrences in Grave Encounters (2011) and Grave Encounters 2 are blended with realism due to the real location of the hospital being a part of the lore.
Tying up loose ends
While the film drags in a few areas, I never lost interest in the mystery. I leaned in each time new information was presented. With every new bit of information, the story became more and more disturbing. What I found to be most unsettling is there is no full resolution to the story. One loose end was tied, but several remained after the closing credits. There’s a post-credit scene that gives us a clear entry point to a sequel, showing a detective following the clues to a new location: I am interested in where this story goes. Fans of found footage, cults, and true crime might enjoy it too.
