Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire is a fictional spin on the now commonplace true crime doc, which premiered at Fantastic Fest last night. The film is directed by Stuart Ortiz , one half of the The Vicious Brothers (the first and second GRAVE ENCOUNTERS and EXTRATERRESTRIAL) and looks to document a serial killer who operated in California for nearly two decades. While the film has an interesting premise, it’s going to be a frustrating watch for most fans of the genre. The film stumbles through an underdeveloped mystery, with flourishes of distracting AI generated images and a lack of attention to detail, which can make or break the suspension of disbelief with period pieces.
The film chronicles the Mr. Shiny Murders, a case that started in 1993 and then after three murders, the killer took a 15 year hiatus, coming back in the aughts, resurfacing in 2010 with the ritualistic murder of a family. This had the family drained of their blood and a mysterious giant symbol painted on the ceiling. It’s an intriguing setup, that while flirting with the supernatural just doesn’t feel completely realized, when it comes to just how far some of these rabbit holes can go or do go in these docs. I mean it’s fictional so the sky is the limit. The film presents itself as a doc on the murders utilizing found footage and photos; it feels like sometimes they understood the assignment, while other times, they didn’t even try.
I had the problem with this film most subgenre veterans are going to have, by this point you’ve seen enough real true crime docs that were probably better edited and more unbelievable than this. That’s the thing with these kinds of stories, it’s not in the gimmick, but how the story is told and how the director deals out those bread crumbs that makes some of these docs so good. They usually start off a vague first act laying the foundation of the characters and stories, but as they focus in on act two, there’s usually a twist that recontextualizes that first act making the viewer unsure what’s going to happen in the third and final big reveal act.
Strange Harvest feels more like your standard narrative setup and sadly it’s not enough when courting this particular subgenre. The story is probably there, it just shows its cards too soon and some of the performances really suffer from feeling like parodies of archetypes, rather than the real deal. Oftentimes it’s more like the dramatic reenactment of the crime, than the actual footage, which really had me really scrutinizing the doc more and more. The problem with making something like Strange Harvest is it has to bring something completely new, or a reinvention to the subgenre, but sadly that’s not what this is.
