STRANGE HARVEST
Starring: Peter Zizzo, Terri Apple, and Jessee J. Clarkson
Director: Stuart Ortiz
NICK
If you love true crime stories then Strange Harvest was made for you. The term mockumentary feels disrespectful here, as this is an impressive recreation of a documentary from the performances to the overall layout to the attention to detail. At times, I forgot I was even watching a film. I’m not a fan of the found-footage format, but here it’s used sparingly and in interesting ways (such as police body cam footage) to tell the story of the case. By the end of the film, you’ll be checking Google to make sure Mr. Shiny (Jessee J. Clarkson) is in fact just a fictional serial killer.
ROBERT
I live in a house that has documentary crime shows on rotation, so when the format of Strange Harvest began staging, I wondered if I was still watching a fictional movie. There was dialogue and cut-ins used throughout that sounded and looked cheesy, but that spoke to its authenticity. It had some elements of Searching with the different types of shots featured, including those from streaming webcams, while the nature of the murders and the creepiness in the found-footage reminded me of V/H/S. Needless to say, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it draws from the best pieces of innovative films.
