My Thoughts On Strange Harvest
Strange Harvest is one of those films I went in thinking I knew exactly what I was getting, and then I ended up surprised by how it actually played out.
The premise is pretty standard, where a serial killer 'Mr Shiny' is operating in San Bernardino County during the 90s and 2000s, leaving gruesome crime scenes behind while the cops try to stay one step ahead.
If that’s all you told me, I’d expect a dark police procedural, maybe something that looks like an extended Law & Order episode with bloodier bodies.
But the way Stuart Ortiz tells it makes all the difference, because instead of staging it like a traditional narrative, he frames the story as a true-crime documentary, and that choice immediately changes how you experience the film.
I’ve seen a lot of those crime docs on cable and streaming, sometimes out of genuine interest, sometimes just because I couldn’t find the remote and let the next episode play. There’s a rhythm to all of them with talking-head interviews, “archival” clips, the detectives retelling events with a mix of professionalism and thinly hidden disgust.
Ortiz gets every bit of that right, and it feels so much like the real thing that I could almost imagine stumbling onto it late at night, assuming it was some Investigation Discovery program. And then, suddenly, the film drops a shock of violence so graphic that you remember, “Oh right, this is a horror movie, not TV.”
The violence is rough. with scenes involving children and animals, and even when I know it’s staged, some things still hit you hard regardless. The practical effects are impressively done, and they look disturbingly real, but that doesn’t make them easier to sit through.
I suppose that’s part of Ortiz’s point, to push past the comfortable distance we usually get from “true crime” stories and confront us with how ugly these murders would actually be, but what held me in place, even during the parts that made me want to look away, were the performances.
Peter Zizzo and Terri Apple play the lead detectives, and they absolutely nail the style of real interviews, and their delivery made me buy into the entire illusion, even more than the fake news footage or crime scene recreations.
The structure of the film is clever, too.
By presenting the story as a documentary/found footage film, Ortiz controls the flow of information in a way you don’t normally see in these kind of films. Usually in serial killer movies, the audience is a step ahead, we know who the killer is, we’ve seen him do things the cops don’t know yet, and half the suspense comes from waiting for the detectives to catch up.
But, in Strange Harvest, it is reversed, as the narrators already know the whole story, and they’re only giving us the pieces they want us to have, and you’re constantly waiting for the next detail to drop, unsure when or how it’s going to shift what you thought you already knew.
With that said, this approach has its downsides, too.
Some of the revelations didn’t feel timed quite right, and I kept expecting other pieces later that would tie it all together, but that never came, which left me with the sense that something was missing.
It’s possible Ortiz wanted that unfinished quality, but it didn’t fully work for me. The story also leans into occult elements at times, and while I enjoyed those touches as part of the horror, they felt slightly at odds with the “documentary” disguise.
Still, I respect the ambition. I’d rather a movie take a risky swing and not land perfectly than play it safe and forgettable, because when Strange Harvest is working, it’s genuinely unsettling.
I also liked how it never gives in to parody or self-awareness, and a lesser filmmaker might have thrown in some winks or satirical commercials to mock the true-crime genre.
But here, Ortiz commits fully, and that commitment makes the movie disturbing in a way it wouldn’t be otherwise, and it’s not laughing at its subject, it’s confronting you with it.
It knows the audience is trained to watch these shows casually, almost like background noise, and it weaponizes that expectation by making it graphic, immersive, and horrifying, and you’re forced to notice the very things you’d normally treat as safe entertainment.
By the end, I felt torn. Part of me wanted a stronger payoff, some bigger twist that would tie up the loose ends. Another part of me admired that it didn’t give me that, because real stories don’t always resolve cleanly.
Either way, it's a good enough experience, and Ortiz took a tired premise and made it feel dangerous again. I found it fascinating, frustrating, and disturbing in equal measure.
I’d take that over polished mediocrity any day.