Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire (dir. Stuart Ortiz)
Our culture has reached critical mass in the world of true crime. Even as a die hard fan of the subgenre, I find it hard to commit to any of the many options available across a wide expanse of streaming providers. Why? Because a lot of them are poorly produced and bubbling over with filler. Also, it seems like we’ve run out of crimes that actually merit the documentary treatment. This, at least in terms of human safety, is a good thing. But in terms of entertainment, it sucks to commit to 6 hours of programming and then be left with a distinct feeling of “is that it?”
This feeling stings even more when you bring supernatural ephemera into the mix. I love a good paranormal episode of Unsolved Mysteries, but the incomplete feeling persists, even as Robert Stack asks “…or was something beyond our human understanding at work?”
Show me something! And if you can’t, then what are we even doing here?
The antidote to this feeling comes in the form of Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire. No, it’s not true crime, but rather a found footage flick that takes the form of a true crime documentary. And since it’s all fictional, anything can happen.
Written and directed by Stuart Ortiz (Grave Encounters), Strange Harvest follows the case of Mr. Shiny, a serial killer who operated in Southern California for nearly twenty years. His killings are ritualistic, and much like his real world counterpart, the Zodiac Killer, he likes to taunt law enforcement by sending cryptic letters and leaving ambiguous imagery at the scene of his crimes.
What sinks so many found footage films, especially those which pose as documentaries, is the question of where the footage comes from, and how well it can clear the hurdle of “why is there a camera pointed at this?” Ortiz’s film smartly apes the structure of just about every true crime doc of the past decade. By leaning into the tropes inherent to the form, he’s able to deliver on the feeling of “comfort TV” only to subvert it by providing the wild escalations that non-fictional true crime media, limited by its adherence to facts, simply cannot. The thought of “holy shit” replaces that of “is that all?”
Adding to the verisimilitude of the project are a duo of performances from Peter Zizzo and Terri Apple as two of the detectives investigating Mr. Shiny and working to bring him to justice. Both come across as real cops, and they keep the story grounded even as it pushes beyond the confines of reality, resulting in a frequently chilling piece of cinema. Despite knowing it’s all pretend, it’s easy to be overcome with the desire to see this case solved…if it even can be. By the time this inventive and spooky feature reaches its denouement, a new story emerges: Will law enforcement open their eyes to something that may go deeper than simple human criminality?
What Happened to Dorothy Bell (dir. Danny Villanueva Jr.)
Despite a stirring concept and a compelling lead performance from Asya Meadows, this ambitious found footager gets lost in its own framing device, relying on the parlor tricks inherent to the subgenre while leaving a potentially meaty story in the periphery.
Meadows plays Ozzie Gray, a troubled young woman who seeks to answer the titular question. Her grandmother, a typically sweet, largely beloved woman, is at the heart of a traumatic memory which left Ozzie scarred both physically and mentally. In the wake of Dorothy Bell’s passing, Ozzie has decided to document her investigation into the real story behind her grandmother’s final days, a period where the elder woman engaged in dangerous and questionable behavior — behavior which may connect to Ozzie’s past trauma.
At first, WHTDB uses its ambiguities well. Ozzie’s camera (cameras? It’s never really clear who is filming certain portions of the footage) starts catching little spooky images and sounds that typically provide the chills of any respectable found footage first act, but the film struggles with figuring out where to go from there. While I can’t speak to the process that writer/director Danny Villanueva Jr. has employed, it feels as if the horror gags were conceived first, and then the story was built backwards from there. The jolts and shrieks feel scattered and disconnected, even as the script scrambles to build a backstory worth telling.
One challenge that found footage filmmakers must rise to is that of guiding the viewer’s eye without abandoning the “this was accidentally captured” of it all. On more than one occasion I had to run the film back to catch something spooky that I missed (ah, the pleasures of digital screeners) due to conflicting focal points. A valid argument could be made that the practice of dividing the viewer’s gaze would lend to rewatch value, which very well could be Villanueva’s intention, and perhaps the film itself would benefit from a second viewing overall. It may be tighter than I’m giving it credit for, I just don’t see myself making the time to give it a second chance. Found footage fans should still seek this one out for some spooky season chills.
