Strange Harvest (2025) and the Deeply Complicated Future of Horror

UPDATE 8/8/2025- According to a statement provided to Signal Horizon by the director of Strange Harvest there is NO AI in this film.

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There’s a specific kind of horror movie that makes you feel like you shouldn’t be watching it. Not because it’s too gory or too weird — though Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire is absolutely both of those — but because it feels off-limits. Like a cursed episode of Forensic Files someone accidentally leaked. A thing the police would politely ask you to delete and not talk about online.

Premiering at Fantastic Fest 2024, Strange Harvest is the latest brain-melter from Stuart Ortiz (co-director of Grave Encounters), and it’s a gnarly piece of horror storytelling that goes well beyond its format. Styled as a faux true-crime documentary, the film blends Lovecraftian dread with serial killer pathology and real-world crime scene detail. It plays like you’re binging a Netflix doc, only to realize somewhere around episode four that the devil might actually be involved.

The Premise: Rituals, Leeches, and Cosmic Rot

Set in San Bernardino (because of course it is), the movie begins with Detectives Joe Kirby (Peter Zizzo) and Lexi Taylor (Terri Apple) responding to a welfare check gone very, very wrong. Inside the house? A family of three, drained of blood, positioned below a cryptic symbol painted on the ceiling. A very high ceiling. Kirby and Taylor recognize it as the signature of “Mr. Shiny,” a serial killer who vanished 15 years ago. He is back. So exactly who is he?

What follows is an increasingly deranged descent into occult horror. Victims are mutilated and left in grotesque dioramas. One is sealed in a drained pool full of leeches. Another is displayed in a public park like a dissected specimen. If you’re a fan of ‘90s-era forensic shows or the Reddit thread r/UnresolvedMysteries, this film will absolutely eat your brain.

The crime scene photos alone are some of the most disturbing images you’ll see in horror this year. Not just because they’re gory, but because they’re presented so dryly, so documentary-clean, that they bypass the usual horror defenses. You don’t get music cues or dramatic close-ups. You just get a still frame that looks real enough to ruin your lunch.

Zizzo and Apple Bring the Human Element

Despite the buckets of blood and cosmic paranoia, the heart of Strange Harvest is its two leads. Peter Zizzo’s Detective Kirby is all burnout and bad memories, the kind of guy who’s seen things that don’t fit on a police report. Terri Apple’s Lexi Taylor is his perfect counterbalance — smart, skeptical, and increasingly rattled by the escalating horror they’re forced to chase. They both have rough edges that seem to be results of their time on the force but also their personalities. They are unpolished pragmatists and that only helps reinforce the disconcerning authenticity of the movie.

Together, they bring the procedural scenes a credibility most horror movies never even attempt. These are not scream queens or exposition bots. These are tired professionals, desperately trying to stay sane while the world around them starts to melt. It’s that grounded, human perspective that makes the insanity around them feel so real — and so terrifying.

The AI of It All: What You Can’t See

Here’s where things get messy, and not just in a horror movie way. Strange Harvest has been the subject of some quiet controversy, reportedly banned from at least one film festival due to its use of artificial intelligence in its post-production process.

In a mockumentary, where the whole gimmick is to make you wonder what’s real, the use of AI without disclosure starts to feel manipulative in the wrong way. It’s not that the effects are distracting (they’re not). It’s that the ambiguity is part of the illusion. And that illusion messes with our understanding of truth, authorship, and even consent. If we don’t know which faces are real, how do we know if they ever agreed to be in this movie?

Ortiz clearly knows he’s playing with fire. And to his credit, he does it artfully. But it’s a fire that burns beyond the edges of this film. Strange Harvest might be an early example of how horror will have to start dealing with AI not just as a tool, but as a thematic and ethical problem. It’s a haunted house built on stolen code. I have seen how that one ends. All of that to be said, when I screened this film initially non of the red flags which normally pop up on my radar registered as AI. When asked for a commment Ortiz clarified for Signal Horizon that “The film does not contain any Generative AI. There was an initial feastival cut that had a handful of images (less than 30 seconds of footage) that used some AI due to the timing of finishing the film for the festival deadlines. As always intended, those shots were replaced and the theatrical version of the film is 100% AI free.”

Horror That Deserves to Go Viral

If I had to guess, Strange Harvest will become the next big viral horror obsession. It practically begs for ARG tie-ins, deep-dive YouTube essays, and conspiracy theories about “Mr. Shiny.” It also wouldn’t hurt to have a fake Reddit thread, a cursed website, and a leaked “deleted” epilogue.

This movie has lore. It has mythology. It has just enough mystery to keep you Googling after the credits roll. It’s what found footage used to feel like before everyone tried to make a ghost whisperer movie on their iPhone.

Final Thoughts

Look, Strange Harvest isn’t a perfect movie. It’s messy, ethically provocative, and depending on your tolerance for moral ambiguity, maybe even a little dangerous. But it’s also one of the most unsettling, inventive horror films of the year. It doesn’t just show you something scary. It asks why you’re scared, and what that fear says about the world we live in now. Strave Harvest comes out on Thursday August 7th in theatres nation wide.