Strange Harvest (2024)

Spooktober Challenge 2025

Premise: So this is a fake documentary about “Mr Shiny”, a serial killer with a really dumb name that’s been active since the early nineties. It is filmed just as if it was one of those True Crime documentaries on Netflix, with interviews, dramatic music cues when they play any real footage, punchable cops and also the feeling that this is not just a dude killing people, there is something a bit worse going on.
Under 90 minutes? Five minutes over the line.
Do they say the title? No!

One sentence review:

Okay, more: I loved this one. The tone is exactly the right one, with those interviews where the people talking clearly want to tell a story in a dramatic way but still keep it as close to the facts as possible. Surprisingly realistic performances too, it does sound like two cops on TV. It very quickly, very early in the movie is obvious that this is some occult shit, and then things keep happening and getting worse and worse. Fun stuff.
A simple way to improve it: If anything, I would have tried not to make the lady cop as dislikeable as she is, specially near the end where she starts doing the equivalent of “and he had one of these, whatchamacallits?” “book” “yeah a [weird face, as if finding the concept laughable, finger quotes] ‘book’, right. If you want to call it that”. Specially since it’s all on the video we just saw.

Trivia about the IMDb trivia: (edited to avoid spoilers)

When the police are guarding […] they all knew what the killer looked like […]. Yet none of the police recognized him when he passed them numerous times. This scene should have taken place before the scene where the police identify the suspect and circulate his photo.