Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire

Strange-Harvest:-Occult-Murder-in-the-Inland-Empire
Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire

The best perdition filmmakers make up words themselves if it comes to their creative work, but few of them like Stuart Ortiz and his work in Strange Harvest will go for it. As part of the people behind Vicious Brothers, he has had his fair share of prominent pieces. His collaboration with them led to Grave Encounters 1 and 2, both very what can be defined as contemporary found footage since they take genre tropes and flip them on their heads crafting something completely different, and terrifying. Recently, Ortiz has come back with perhaps the best pseudo documentary pertaining to the horror genre since Lake Mungo, in that all subtlety is thrown out of the window and two main characters are so convincingly played it will make you ponder over the verisimilitude of what you are witnessing Strange Harvest: Occult Murder In The Inland Empire.

In Strange Harvest, Ortiz tracks the stories of emphasis surrounding the design within the documentary which seems like a true crime investigation. The story also shares the experiences of two investigators who have handled the case for almost two decades. the story appears to be real as evidenced by the staging of actual events; Ortiz grimly shows actual incidents of murders as well. In this case, one can count many images of the crime that were abused, in this case, magic so much more than just pieces of paper on a wall.

Between words, Ortiz creates such rich layers of pictures, as interviews, stories, and different chronologies of events that it becomes impossible to not believe the world he has created. He believes that the monotony was meant to add intensity to the very conclusion, which is wild and surreal and at the same time fits so perfectly into the principle of the universe in which the work takes place. Would love to see the chaos go a little further.

To go any further would ruin the pleasure of watching Strange Harvest, where viewers can see its wild twists and turns. But I will say this: I’ve been waiting for such a radical approach to cosmic horror.

There are successful pseudo documentaries, challenging texts like Lake Mungo and The Poughkeepsie Tapes, that come as close to convincing their audience as ever. They blur that distinction between horror fiction and reality which feels strange and disorienting to the audience. Strange Harvest achieves that and creates a plot that is basically Saw meets The Poughkeepsie Tapes but without the snuff movie angle. There’s plenty of blood and gore and it is there without any of the perverse voyeurism that it cannot withstand in telling a chilling tale of a lone man and a horde of leeches.

The incredible cadaver design seen throughout Strange Harvest was done by Josh Russell, who was also the mind behind the creature in The Ritual. There’s even such attention to detail within the crime scene photos, as Russell and Ortiz obviously worked together to produce the most horrific images reasonably possible. They manage to be both sickening and ridiculous, and this combination is likely responsible for some of the most emblematic and disturbing images you will see all year.

Strange Harvest is the self and unexpected winner of the Fantastic Fest, a picture that went over most dinosaurs’ skulls but will be on all found footage horror enthusiast’s heads up. Ortiz clearly knows the technique and loves the genre because it shows in each take of the film. Zizzo and Apple’s performances are what adds up to this cosmic horror ice cream; they played extremely convincingly police officers who were never fake or overly cheesy. This is how a well made at times frightening false documentary should look like.

For movies like Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire visit – 123movies

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top