Strange Harvest
It is only with hindsight that patterns emerge from the chaos, San Bernardino police detectives Joseph Kirby and Alexis Taylor not having sufficient parallels or evidence among the dozens of unsolved murders every year to connect three apparently random killings until the July 2010 murder of the Sheridan family, Ted, Tiffany and daughter Samantha, taped to their dining room chairs and exsanguinated, the buckets at their feet marked in gradients of “going, going, gone.”
Their blood used to paint a triangular symbol on the ceiling, the bodies arranged post-mortem to stare upwards towards it, it was that icon which tied it to three other killings which had begun a decade before with no apparent connection between the victims, a young woman found in a forest, a bedridden old man, a twelve year old boy, each of them having a body part removed, the symbol repeated in letters sent to the investigating unit claiming “the harvest has just begun.”
Written and directed by Stuart Ortiz, formerly one half of “the Vicious Brothers,” he lives up to his moniker while reaping his Strange Harvest, moving from the “found footage” style of 2011’s Grave Encounters and its sequel to a “true crime” documentary format of the extended investigation and eventual apprehension of a serial killer identified as loner Leslie Sykes (Jessee J Clarkson), an apparent ghost who uses the name Albert Shiny and becomes known to the public as “Mr Shiny.”
Subtitled Occult Murder in the Inland Empire, interviewed in retrospect detectives Kirby and Taylor (Peter Zizzo and Terri Apple) are diligent and determined but hampered by a lack of witnesses or evidence and the inability to profile the killer, his targets and methods inconsistent yet bloody and disturbing, one later victim submerged for days in a pool of leeches, with revenge taken on anyone who interferes, a security guard who stumbled upon a crime scene later hunted and made into an example, deterring others from coming forward.
Assembled from interviews with the detectives, friends and family members of the victims and experts, with crime scene photos, news reports and police bodycam footage Strange Harvest is convincing and compelling, the familiar format recreated expertly and immediately engaging with a mystery which only becomes more disturbing as it progresses, the details gruesome and ghastly and the ultimate goal a puzzle which can only be understood by the deranged mind which gathers the stolen pieces of the bodies.
The erratic and garbled letters recalling the arrogant and taunting Zodiac correspondence as they praise Azragal, Kaliban and Dragaul and reference “the Thorn of Time,” Strange Harvest feasts on the need for answers, the urge to understand, Mr Shiny apparently drawing his instructions from astrology and the occult but the viewer dragged along by his madness to a conjunction of events in the sky and below on the morning of May 13th 2011, a grim conclusion rather than the comforting resolution of closure.
Strange Harvest will be available on digital download from Monday 27th October in the UK and Wednesday 29th October in Australia
