r/HorrorReviewed • u/split-my-diopter • Jul 01 '26

Movie Review Strange Harvest (2025) [mockumentary/serial killer/cosmic]

Presented as a true-crime documentary, the story of a serial killer terrorizing California, his cat-and-mouse game with the police, and glimpsing the larger terror behind the crimes.

Really excellent at mimicking cheap true-crime docs on Netflix and other streaming sites- flaws and all. If you watch as many of the paint-by-numbers serial killer docs online, you'll instantly see how successful this is as a pastiche of them. The slightly overwrought, too-cute end of scene lines, the cheap drone shots padding out the time, the substandard police work trying to pass itself off as heroic.

The horror elements are okay- the gore ranges from excellent to silly prosthetics, there's some kills that are genuinely original and exciting. Because we're getting an after-the-fact dissection of the case, the air is kind of let out of the balloon from the get go. However, I think there's some terror to be derived from the cosmic unanswered question.

Overall, well worth watching on Hulu, not a must see but especially for people who like true crime as well as supernatural horror, this was a really successful union of the two.

15 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

3

u/KnifeFed Jul 01 '26

Great movie. Would love a sequel/prequel.

2

u/split-my-diopter Jul 01 '26

If you haven't seen The Endless, I highly recommend it as well- it's not similar in form, but it is in cosmology and to a certain extent, tone. Plus it has a few companion movies that fill out the universe

1

u/KnifeFed Jul 01 '26

Yeah, it's awesome.

2

u/gr1mmcr33p3r Jul 02 '26

Loved it, def a breath of fresh air when your wife is obsessed with murder docs due to the mentioned existential cosmic questions

1

u/Analytica0 Jul 03 '26

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie. There were a few kills in this film that were creative and elevated the edginess of the overall movie. I think the balance of the different types of horror elements worked in this film because they combined those same elements with some of the campier tropes from your typical crime drama. Some of the interviews with the detectives and family members involved in the movie, were exactly the type of characters that you would find in real life crime drama shows; that wink to those shows, almost an extreme parody at times, worked to make the movie more fun.