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Strange Harvest Dir Ortiz, Stars Zizzo & Apple on True Crime Thriller

Director Stuart Ortiz and stars Peter Zizzo & Terri Apple spoke to Bleeding Cool about their faux true crime film "Strange Harvest."

Director and writer Stuart Ortiz has a natural gift for not using conventional filmmaking, whether it's his solo work or his work as part of The Vicious Brothers with Colin Minihan. Both took the early 2010s by storm with their films Grave Encounters (2011), its sequel Grave Encounters 2 (2012), and Extraterrestrial (2014). Keeping consistent with found-footage and reality-type style, Ortiz, who's also worked on It Stains the Sand Red (2016), channeled some of the grittiest stories from within the true crime genre with Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire from XYZ Films and Adorable Damage. Ortiz and stars Peter Zizzo and Terri Apple, who play detectives Joe Kirby and Lexi Taylor, spoke to Bleeding Cool about the film's inspiration, how Zizzo and Apple immersed themselves into their roles, and if Ortiz felt any different creatively away from Minihan.

Strange Harvest is a faux true crime documentary; the film goes to July 2010 when the San Bernardino County authorities were faced with one of the most bizarre crime scenes they'd ever encountered. Alerted by a concerned friend, local police arrived at the victims' home, and the murders they discovered shook them to the ground. The crime scene showed ritualistic aspects, and quickly, one of the detectives recognized a symbol painted on the ceiling in the victims' blood, linking back to a serial killer they'd chased in 1995 before the killer seemingly took a 15-year break.

Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire: How True Crime Became a Unique Canvas for a Film

Bleeding Cool: Stuart, what was the inspiration behind 'Strange Harvest,' and what made you decide to do the film in a true crime format rather than traditional?

Ortiz: The idea of doing something like a documentary has been with me since I made my first movie called 'Grave Encounters' (2011). That's a found footage movie, but it has some documentary elements. I always thought it was a cool way to tell that story, to approach it like a horror story. There are things you could do with a traditional narrative type of movie. The idea stuck in my head, and then during COVID, when 'Tiger King' came out and blew up as a big phenomenon. It seemed the time was right for it, and people would be ready if I approached it like a documentary. It's all that swirling in my head, plus, like 'True Detective,' season one, some 'Silence of the Lambs' (1991), Stephen King, and H.P. Lovecraft throw in a blender, and you get 'Strange Harvest.'

Peter and Terri, how did you prep your roles as Detectives Joseph Kirby and Alexis Taylor? Was there some form of backstory you guys helped yourselves to help flesh your characters out?

Zizzo: Speaking for myself, I wanted to make sure that, as Stuart has said many times, "If you don't believe these two people are detectives, this whole ruse falls apart." That's one of the reasons Terri and I were cast since you wouldn't necessarily recognize us. For one thing, I watched a lot of true crime, so I went back and specifically watched Detective Joe Kenda, who's popular on Discovery+. The guy's a retired detective much older than me, but he's got this real. I'm realizing this now in all his interviews, he's got this dead-eyed kind of no-nonsense way of looking at the camera where you get the sense, he knows more than he's telling you and I love that vibe.

I watched a bunch of [Joe]. I'm only thinking of this now, and remember, then, my therapist knows a retired New York City homicide detective. I talked to him a couple of times and got a sense of the stoic nature of these guys, who have ingested so much horrific stuff they've witnessed firsthand and then had to tell these awful truths to the families of victims. That will take a toll, but you must maintain a certain Zen. In approaching the voice of [Det Kirby] and the words I had to say, I wanted to make sure there was an undercurrent you could pick up.

Behind the eyes, this guy is haunted by what he's talking about. At the same time, you can't make it boring. You've got to make him interesting enough and colorful enough that you believe this guy is a detective, but also that he's in great pain talking about this stuff in what I try to convey, a sort of sense that as I'm talking to who's interviewing me, a part of me, the subtext is, "Can you fucking believe what I'm telling you? Can you fucking believe this?" Play that all the time as I'm telling the story guy, "Where do you hear this shit?" But in a calm way. That's my approach with him, and I love him because he was almost a musician because I am a musician. That was an easy thing to incorporate into the back story.

Apple: I loved [my] character and didn't realize until later I had written a script called 'Bomb Squad' about a chick on the bomb squad. I know it goes back, but it's going back out and making the rounds as a character like Lexy Taylor. I'm starting to live that out by not being able to play that character who had a similar backstory I never realized until way after we filmed this thing. I said, "God! If Lexy Taylor was Kelly Samuels [from 'Bomb Squad'], I went, "This is me getting to play this because I was too old to play it in the 'Bomb Squad,' because she's in her late 20s and that's when I read."

My follow-up question for Stuart is, what are your biggest career challenges in making this? Did it feel creatively like the process was dramatically different from not working with Colin [Minihan] on something like this?

Ortiz: Working with Colin, not working with him, we're great, either way. We work together super well. I've done tons myself, so I guess it wasn't anything different. Concerning the approach, there are so many challenges when you do a movie like this. It's weird and unconventional with how we had to schedule things. You were scheduling where you would shoot one thing, for example, a newscaster for eight hours saying two lines. Every challenge was weird and unique because of the various formats. Another big challenge was that we were next to the location when we shot the interviews. The warehouse where we shot was next to a recycling plant or a fact simile. Every five to ten minutes, a random sound ruined numerous takes, which was a challenge to be sure of the psychological level and not lose our minds that day.

Terri, back to what you had to go into to play Alexis, and we're back to your talking about 'Bomb Squad,' the script you have, and that's where you got cut off.

Apple: I liked the character and played the back story of her childhood. She was passionate about what she did for a living, so I incorporated that. I also enjoyed playing the character of a homicide detective who is passionate about being good at her job, solving things, and being frustrated by it at the same time.

Strange Harvest, which also stars Andy Lauer, Matthew Peschio, Thomas Wolfe Jr, Tim Shelburne, Christina Helene Bra, LA Williams, and Jessee J Clarkson, was featured in Fantastic Fest 2024 held at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas, and is awaiting distribution. For more information on the film, you can check it out.

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