‘Strange Harvest’ Director Stuart Ortiz On Creating His Terrifying New Found Footage Horror
Stuart Ortiz‘s new film Strange Harvest: Occult Murder In The Inland Empire was the sleeper hit of Fantastic Fest 2024. By emulating the aesthetics of modern true crime documentaries (think what you see all over Netflix and Max), Ortiz crafts a terrifying horror story that, at times, almost feels real.
The synopsis is brief and reads, “A faux true-crime documentary about two detectives’ pursuit of an infamous serial killer named Mr. Shiny, who terrorized Southern California for almost two decades.” To know any more would spoil the experience of watching Strange Harvest, because Ortiz truly takes you on a journey from beginning to end.
We caught up with Ortiz and his stars Terri Apple and Peter Zizzo at Fantastic Fest to talk about crafting gnarly crime scene photos, meeting with retired NYPD officers for research, and writing realistic dialogue.
Dread Central: Terri and Peter, the two of you feel so real. What was it like to find the characters and make them feel like this is an actual documentary? There’s a realism to your performances that’s really cool to watch.
Terri Apple: Well, for me, I just played it like It was a real character. I did not look beyond anything to make it. There was no duplicitousness going on. For me it was just, [Stuart] wrote a phenomenal character and I just gave her a backstory and a life and it was a great acting role for me. So that’s the way I played it. And it was just that character.
Peter Zizzo: I actually am Joe Kirby, homicide detective. Or am I? [Laughs]
DC: You went meta and actually became a homicide detective.
PZ: I’m actually playing an actor playing a homicide detective.
Joking aside, I come from a place where I’m already a big true crime fan and also a massive horror fan. So I really went back to true crime and certain shows. I think it’s Joe Kenda, he’s got this sort of dead eye kind of way of looking at you that says, “Can you fucking believe what I’m telling you right now?” And I thought, “Oh, that’s a cool way in.” Stuart was very particular in the auditions about micro expressions and being very natural and real. Luckily what he wrote could be said that way because it’s hard to get dialogue. So he’s a great writer.
Also, the training that I was getting, oddly enough, which is mostly theatrical, prepared me to be super, super minimal. But I also did get to have some conversations with a retired New York City detective. There was this sort of stoic quality and a gentle quality when he would describe these really horrific things that he’d been through. And also now I’m imagining the news he’s had to deliver to families and victims. So I thought this character is very haunted. Both of our characters were very haunted by what they’ve seen. So I had that as a sort of starting point and then the words are great. It just makes it that much easier to play it for realism.
DC: Stuart, there’s so much going on in Strange Harvest, but these two really kind of anchor it emotionally, and so I was wondering about that casting process and also writing those characters and finding them in the script.
Stuart Ortiz: Right. Well, on the writing side of things, they were always meant to have their partners. They do the same job. They have a lot of similar traits, but they are definitely slightly different people, obviously, in how they approach things. I think the Joe Kirby character internalizes what’s happening a little bit more. He doesn’t necessarily project it outward as much. Whereas I think that Lexi’s character is a bit more brash. When she sees something she doesn’t like, she’s not afraid to say it. She’s outspoken and that’s just how she approaches things. So that’s how I approached it with the writing. But then more than anything, it was just I didn’t feel the need to embellish any of the, I don’t want to say dialogue. It’s really not dialogue. It’s monologues that the actors have.
I just didn’t want to embellish it with flowery prose because I feel that that is the Achilles heel of any writer that tries to do a faux documentary or found footage film. They’ll try to pepper in this exposition or they try to pepper in character in a way that becomes unnatural when the character starts talking. It’s just not believable. When people are interviewed, it’s usually you try to give it pretty straightforward. It’s a weird kind of situation that’s not totally normal.
I just wanted to play it straight and I didn’t want to feel the need to pepper in any character stuff to weigh it down because I brought in just hints of it. These two actors are amazing, just intuitively. They picked up on all those things without me even really having to articulate them at all. It was very clear from seeing the readings from both of them. It was just like, “That’s them.” You just know it.
These two brought so much depth, so much reality to Strange Harvest. You just got to find the right people and I found my people. I expected a lot from them. There’s just a lot of expectations. Once I find my people, I’m like, “That’s them. They’re amazing. They can do anything.” I’ve set the bar all the way at the top and I just assumed you have to hit it. You’ll meet,
TA: First of all, we both loved this script and we all loved each other, but you want to do that for your writer, director, producer. When you trust someone, you want to give them what they want.
DC: What were your reactions when you read the script?
PZ: Well, I mean, first of all, I just want one quick anecdote about how you expected a lot, which is true. And me wanting so much to be as ready as I possibly could be. So I came in the first day, I was off book on 30 pages of monologue from Joe Kirby. I was ready to rock and roll and at the end of the day they go, so tomorrow we’re going to try to get page 30 through page 80. Is that cool? I’m like, I’m sorry, what?
TA: Yeah, like a soap opera
SO: I knew that I was pushing these guys hard, but I knew that they could handle it.
PZ: But, to your question. I somehow got a copy of the script, and I started reading it And immediately I’m like, “Oh my God, I want to play this guy so bad.” And also I had somewhere to be for something, and so I got about halfway through [the script] and I was like, “I need to read a little, but I really got to go.” And I could not wait to come home and keep going. I was in the story and generally as actors, it’s not that often that you get something that does that. Strange Harvest really did that. And I was just so invested in how this played out and it stuck the landing. It’s hard to do with something like this where he’s trying to weave in certain things toward the end.
TA: I did not read the full script, but just the two scenes that he gave, I fell in love with the character and I just went, the fuck, I want a player too. I had the same thing. But then I was scared, once I read the script, and I mean, me personally, I’m like this watching part of the movie. He goes, he felt, they both felt badly and they’re like, wait, she plays Lexi Taylor.
And I thought, how am I going to handle this on set? I mean, that was one of the biggest things. I went home playing Lexi Taylor. By the way, it was the most fun set ever. That’s always what it is. Wonderful. Amazing set. It was a complete opposite. Such a great experience.
PZ: A lot of construction outside. [Laughs]
SO: That was the worst thing about the shoot. That was a big learning lesson. Next time you’re looking for a location to shoot interviews, hang out for more than 10 minutes. You want to be decisive and say, “This is it.” I was like, “Oh this is great, let’s go.” And I was right to an extent. Just not sound-wise. I mean, I am glad we did it because ultimately it looks good.
DC: Well, Strange Harvest has that exact look of a true crime documentary when they find warehouses to put people in for interviews.
PZ: I thought it was really clever and cool. He shot me is one part and then he shot Terri in this other part. So we’re each in our own sort of world environment.
DC: Who did you work with to craft the crime scene photos and some of the crime scene footage in terms of the effects?
SO: We worked with a really talented makeup artist named Josh Russell. He’s a young guy who does amazing work. He did the monster in The Ritual. He did makeup on the new Hellraiser movie. So I don’t know how we got him, is what I’m saying. I don’t know why he did our movie.
We didn’t have much money to work with, but I knew from experience that the stuff can be expensive and you get what you pay for. If you only pay a hundred bucks for makeup, it’s going to look like a hundred bucks of makeup. So we put enough towards it and I think we still didn’t have enough to afford Josh. But I just knew that it was important. So we put a lot of resources into it. Then we just spent a lot of time. I mean, Josh gave us amazing stuff to work with and then we’d set it up and we would work on these sets to get them right for hours and hours and hours.
DC: Oh really?
TA: It was so real.
PZ: But you know, it’s interesting. If you’re watching this movie and you’re going to yourself, “Is this really true?”, your clue is that Strange Harvest shows shit that a true crime documentary would blur. This doesn’t blur anything, that’s part of the awesome look of this. It’s like true crime, but you see the shit.
SO: It was the same thing with Grave Encounters where we got tired of them going, “Oh, what was that? Did you see something? Was that a blur in the corner of the frame?” We’re like, why don’t we just show it? Listen, we all want to see it. Let’s see what it’s all about. Let’s look at it.
TA: But the interesting thing is you’re watching it after the fact, not while it’s being done. This is a different angle. ,
PZ: That’s actually a really good point. That reminds me of a riff on something that I was thinking about the other day when we were talking to someone. When you hear about something horrible, one of the things you say is, “God, I can’t imagine what that must’ve been like.” Well, with most horror movies, you don’t have to imagine because they show you the kills.
With Strange Harvest, you do have to imagine a little bit. It’s sort of like in Jaws when you don’t see the shark for a lot of the movie. So not having seen the deed in a lot of ways makes it so much more terrifying. Although in one case you do see a deed that you don’t think you’re going to see.
SO: Yeah, that’s the thing. As much as we do follow that idea of showing stuff later, there are times when we change that and flip it on its head, as well.
Categorized:Interviews
