What happens when the clues lead to the stars?
Cleverly disguised as a true-crime documentary, Strange Harvest follows a pair of Inland Empire detectives on the trail of an extremely fiendish serial killer known to the fearful public as Mr Shiny.
Writer-director Stuart Ortiz has an infallible sense for the structure of true crime television, designing a mockumentary that easily clears every hurdle of credibility.
From the parade of victim friends and relatives grieving to an off-camera journalist, to police body cam footage that gets mighty hairy, Ortiz gets all the familiar elements exactly right.
Most significantly, the weary sincerity of the cops (played by Peter Rizzo and Terri Apple) is entirely convincing as they recall every harrowing step of their pursuit of Leslie Sykes (Jessee Clarkson), a phantom butcher whose murderous motives and penchant for occult ritual defy ordinary reason.
Following in the bloody footsteps of the Zodiac Killer, Sykes, aka Mr. Shiny, taunts the police with lunatic letters, signed with a mysterious tripod symbol that also shows up at the increasingly disturbing crime scenes.
Any reader of Lovecraft should recognize the red flags that pop up during the course of the investigation (Shambler from the Stars? Mysteries of the Worm?), culminating in a showdown during a cosmic event that only happens every 800 years.
And it requires the sacrifice of an infant. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.
The good news is that you don’t have to wait till the stars are aligned to see Strange Harvest. It’s on Hulu and it’s a lulu.
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