By blending genres,
Strange Harvest creates a suitably unsettling horror flick.
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There are two genres that have exploded in popularity in the digital age of movie making: documentaries and horror. The reasons are pretty straight-forward. Documentaries are a difficult sell if you're asking people to come into the theater, because they're either very long, very depressing or both. So if feels less like you're paying for a bad time to watch a documentary via a streaming service you pay a monthly fee for. It also means you can dive into something like the latest Ken Burns doc on your own time versus a TV showing or a physical copy from your library with a limited loan period. Combine that with the explosion of true crime and infotainment it's easy to see why docs have exploded.
For horror, it's harder to pin down, but I have a two pet theories. The first is that there's always been an appetite for the genre, but that in the 90s and 2000s the genre was owned by the studio machine who didn't necessarily see the genre as a cash cow. Whereas, in the 2010s and beyond, you've got studios built on making low budget horror movies who saw/see giant returns on their small budgets. The profit margin on a $5 million movie than made $50 million is way better than a $100 million dollar movie that made $150 million. Which also means we have more voices and variety in the genre.
The second is that the stigma of the genre has been successfully peeled back. We're at the point where horror flicks are getting nominations and wins for Oscars, which means more and more up and coming creators are trying their hand in the genre as a means of breaking into the industry. As much as a cheesy horror movie was considered a black mark on an up and coming actor's resume (see Jennifer Aniston in a Leprechaun movie), now you can leverage a genre performance into fame or becoming an genre darling (see Jack O'Connell's current track and Samara Weaving's genre queen career). Scream queen is now a compliment, not a dig.
So with both genres surging in popularity, you'd think that there would be more horror docs or mocumentaries right? Interestingly enough no. Largely speaking, the horror genre has continued to expand or revisit the found footage genre with plenty of movies about streamers and vloggers having fun with the idea of someone live streaming their own haunting or more or less filming an entire movie through a GoPro on someone's head.
But straight up, we sat people down for interviews about this messed up thing documentaries? Not so much.
I bring all of this up, because Strange Harvest demonstrates the terrifying and fun potential of horror docs.
The Setup
The film follows the case of "Mr. Shiny" a serial killer who committed a number of grisly crimes throughout California's Inland Empire. Now the police who worked the case and impacted parties explain what happened and try to unpack what it all means.
I might've been the perfect audience for this movie. I'm a horror and doc fan whose also ingested a lot of true crime over the years. But let's start with the film's approach and why I think it works so well.
Great Use of the Format
The reasons why low-budget filmmakers like found-footage movies makes a ton of sense. They're inexpensive, the hand-held camera work puts the audience in the headspace of whoever is living through the experience, and you can spend most of the movie dumping exposition because that's what talking heads do.
One of the best decisions the movie makes is to make the fake doc a retrospective on events that have already happened. Which is normal for documentaries, but not for the found footage genre. This means that everybody being interviewed can layer in their commentary will elements or foreboding and foreshadowing during each scene break.
It also uses the expected elements you'd see in the serial killer and true crime documentaries against the viewer.
As terrifying as a single murder scene or repeat offender can be. There's a predictability to them and their cases.
They have an MO including their type of victim and even how they end lives. But Mr. Shiny doesn't have any of those. His crimes are all gruesome, but who the victims are, what kind of gruesome act he carries out all come with a new element of malice and ritual the audience hasn't seen yet. All with this hint of supernatural influence at play.
The film also stays within the boundaries of the expected format, weaving in grainy footage from the police, news reports, and back to our interviewees.
Which brings me to an unexpected appeal of the film.
The Ideal Movie Detectives
Anyone familiar with the true crime genres knows that almost all murder investigations eventually become an indictment of the police department. They ignore leads, mishandle evidence, or pursue a suspect with no involvement due to prejudices while the real monster commits another crime. And when pressed they usually don't provide comment or are unapologetic about their missteps and failures.
But our two cops here? I liked them.
There's a lot of reasons, but most of them boil down to them doing the opposite of what law enforcement often does. For example, when a young sex worker is one of the victims, the cops are the ones pointing out that many killers target these groups because they inherently understand that police do not look after sex workers. So wild to hear detectives talk about biases within their own profession.
They're also forthright about things that disturb them and when they make mistakes, with both detectives owning egregious oversights that could have ended the case right then and there.
This is also extra effective because these cops don't sound incompetent. They're going off of the evidence they have in each moment and pursue leads aggressively and fairly while looking to get more evidence. Which makes "Mr. Shiny's" taunts and ability to stay one step ahead even more terrifying.
Even with the police doing their best, this monstrous man is still able to run free.
The Supernatural Question
Strange Harvest has a great idea when it comes to introducing a supernatural element. Provide a possible explanation or two, but don't give concrete answers.
I think a lot of horror movies misstep when they feel the need to overexplain. Not only do we know there's a demon involved, but we're going to get it's entire back story including the day it originated. When, generally speaking, a lack of answers is more frustrating and terrifying.
That's also what makes for some of the most compelling true crime. Trying to piece together what would drive someone to do so many heinous things. Even if you get an answer that doesn't mean it's a good or satisfying answer.
So treating the entire Mr. Shiny event as an unexplainable aberration that may have a supernatural element to it that we don't understand, not only lines up with the polices inability to catch this guy, but also adds another layer of terror on top of everything. Catching your average murderer can be hard enough, but a supernaturally powered/driven one? That's nightmare fuel.
Conclusion: A Novel Approach
By blending genres, Strange Harvest creates a suitably unsettling horror flick. 8/10
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