Directed & written by Stuart Ortiz (Grave Encounters 1 & 2, Extraterrestrial), Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire uses the true crime documentary format to unleash grim horror.
Framed entirely as a grisly true crime documentary, Strange Harvest tracks two detectives’ pursuit of a grisly serial killer’s murder spree across San Bernardino County.
Peter Zizzo and Terri Apple star as Detectives Joe Kirby and Lexi Taylor, who act as talking heads as they investigate the mysterious and elusive “Mr. Shiny,” a serial killer who leaves little in the way of clues despite the ghastly, horrific nature of his crimes spanning from the early ’90s to the early aughts.
Stuart Ortiz, one half of the filmmaking duo known as The Vicious Brothers, is no stranger to blurring fact and fiction. Bloody Disgusting spoke with Ortiz and lead stars Peter Zizzo and Terri Apple at Fantastic Fest, where the film made its world premiere (our review).
Despite its sprawling, dense mythology, Strange Harvest originated with the idea of approaching a horror film as a true crime documentary. “Once I clued in on this idea, it just seemed like the most obvious thing that I’d want to cover first and foremost would be a serial killer,” Ortiz says of Strange Harvest’s evolution. “It just seemed like that’s where I just went instantly, basically. Then, as far as the mythology, I was just figuring out, ‘Who is this guy? What’s his motivation? What’s he all about?’ You can take that in a lot of different routes. I decided to take the route that gets a little bit more otherworldly, a little bit more cosmic by the end.”
Ortiz continues, “I was just interested in putting those things together in a blender basically and making a weird Frankenstein creation.”
One of the key components of Strange Harvest’s effectiveness is the natural performances by Zizzo and Apple. It became a true collaboration between the actors and Ortiz. Zizzo explains, “I was already a massive true crime fan, massive horror fan. I went back and more pointedly watched specific true crime that featured detectives who have seen a lot, right? This guy, Joe Kenda, I tried to adopt a little of [Kenda’s mannerisms] for this guy. [Ortiz] wanted very subtle things. In the audition itself, before we ever met, it was, ‘Show us those micro-expressions.’ I remember that would be a specific line from the audition directive. I thought, ‘Okay, yeah, I totally get what that is.’ Then, my therapist knows a retired New York City homicide detective. So I called that guy. He was a little like, ‘these, thems, and those,’ the way he talked. But I’m from New York, so we related, and he had a sort of stoicism. There was empathy, but he was always calm, just very much like this.”
“So he’s telling you this horrific stuff that he’s experienced and internalized,” Zizzo continues. “I was like, ‘Wow, there’s so much for me to use there.’ Because we all internalize terrible things in our lives, what if I took that and didn’t reveal it, but just informationally revealed it; how would that show up on my face and in my cadences? You also don’t want to deliver this flat because it’s boring. So how do I do that? How do I do the music here so it’s not act-y? And I also think he was really smart, especially the way he casts because Teri and I have different sort of outward personalities, and in different ways, our actual personalities played into the way we delivered his amazing writing.”
Strange Harvest fulfilled a dream acting role for Apple. She tells Bloody Disgusting, “Well, I think first of all, I would love to always play a detective. It’s a great freaking role. So that’s a good fit for me in alignment with the kind of work I want to do. I fell in love with the writing, and I fell in love with the character. I mean, certainly look, there are things you align with in a character, and there are things that are just so foreign that are so not who you are as a human. But the great thing about acting is getting me to delve into the aspects of a human and play that. I just played her as Lexi Taylor, a detective. So I mean, I’ve watched a lot of thrillers in a lot of shows. I did not mimic her or see somebody and go whatever. But certainly, I liked her characterization. I guess her mannerisms aren’t necessarily mine, but I just got into her mind, and just played it and played with him. I knew what our goal was.”
Ortiz doesn’t hold back when it comes to the true crime or the horror, evoking films like The Poughkeepsie Tapes with Strange Harvest.
“I really wanted to push it as far as I could,” the filmmaker says of the gruesome horror. “I felt that the format, something about the true crime format, whether it’s listening to it on a podcast or watching a documentary, there’s something about it that is this safety blanket. It’s like this hand that can hold your hand and walk you through it. These true crime documentaries are all about giving context and commentary to an event that happened, usually in the past tense. This horrible thing happened, but it happened a while ago, so it’s no longer a threat. So, it’s kind of this safe way that you can experience these horrifying stories, these real-life things that have happened. So, in that sense, I think that’s why it’s like you’ll hear about people that you wouldn’t expect are super into true crime.”
“For a weirdo like me, it’s no surprise,” Ortiz adds. “But it’s like suburban soccer mom loves listening to stories about Ted Bundy, and she’s obsessed with it, right? I think it’s because true crime, the format, just gives you this, I don’t know, just this safe space to be able to experience these things. For that reason, I think you can amp it up even more than you could because I think a lot of this stuff in this film, if it were presented in a more conventional manner, just a more conventional narrative style, would probably be too much. To show the killing, some of the stuff might just push it to the point. Because I do believe there’s a point where you cross into some line of; I don’t believe that there are any lines that you can cross except for I just don’t want it to be in poor taste.”
The format, the painstaking recreation of a true crime documentary, informed everything else. So much so that Ortiz never wavered from it, not wanting to break the spell for audiences.
“It was important to me that I didn’t want to do it as a satire, as a farce, as anything like that,” Ortiz tells Bloody Disgusting. “I tried to play it completely straight. Honestly, that’s what interests me personally is seeing the uncanny horror kind of scenarios from a perspective of complete, utter reality. It’s interesting to me: what would people actually do in these scenarios? What would they actually be like to experience? I don’t think a lot of horror movies really get there. They’re too over-stylized or something, and I’m really interested in trying to get at that really gritty reality that’s there.”
While we won’t spoil what happens, Zizzo points out that audiences should stay through the credits for a key reason. “It’s another 10 seconds of Joe Kirby in a different situation,” the actor cryptically teases.
“There’s the implication of something, of larger stories and more,” Ortiz adds, hinting at a much larger universe in mind. And Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire is only the beginning.
Stuart Ortiz behind the scenes