STRANGE HARVEST (2025) HORROR MOVIE REVIEW

STRANGE HARVEST (2025) – Halloween Month continues with this review of a movie which got previewed in 2024 before its official release in August 2025. Because Balladeer’s Blog covers everything from mild Silent-Era horror films to extreme horror from recent decades I will post my courtesy warning for Strange Harvest:

IF YOU DO NOT LIKE EXTREME CONCEPTS AND VIOLENCE, PLEASE DON’T CLICK ON “CONTINUE READING” BELOW. Thanks.

Strange Harvest nicely reproduces the vibes of the countless True Crime channels and combines it with the feel of more horror-oriented channels like Scary Interesting. The film is presented as a True Crime episode about a viciously violent serial killer who has been at large for over twenty years.

However, his murders seemed unrelated until detective work recently found the obscure link connecting them. I will go into details about the grotesque murders below. Oddly, despite the grisly nature of the slayings, Strange Harvest otherwise starts out with a slow burn approach reminiscent of Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and other films.

The movie patiently adds the supernatural aspects slowly, and even then indicates the paranormal trappings may just reflect the killer’s insane beliefs until the obvious can no longer be ignored.

Taking it from the top, the mock True Crime piece looks at the murder of a small family. They were all tied to their chairs at the dinner table, fatally stabbed and left so that their blood drained into buckets on the floor. Their blood was then used to paint the odd symbol associated with this film on the dining room ceiling.

This eventually ties in with the murder of a young woman found in a National Park. She was found in several pieces, having been dismembered alive and her body parts – including her internal organs – scattered around that park.

Following that crime we get the stabbing death of an elderly man in a nursing home. The killer broke in overnight, killed the man and slipped away. Then a 12-year-old boy goes missing and is found dead days later in a bog with his liver surgically removed.

No connection was made among the murders for twenty years as the killer seemingly stopped his macabre activities. The dining room table mass murder that started the True Crime examination was investigated by Detective Joe Kirby (Peter Zizzo), who had looked into the three earlier slayings from two decades ago.

To avoid spoilers for first time viewers I will leave out how Joe pieced together the link between this dinner table massacre and the individual murders from long ago. The hunt is on as Joe is joined by Detective Lexi Taylor (Terri Apple).

Next, the murderer invades the home of a young couple, slaughters the woman and uses a blowtorch to leave the man a horribly scarred invalid for the rest of his life. With Joe Kirby and Lexi Taylor in pursuit, the killer – called Mr. Shiny because of his weird mask – commits many, many more murders, all with horrific details.

Those additional killings range from the comparatively quick strike at a teenage girl during her latest livestream to the three-day long tortuous death of a man left in a shallow pool filled wih leeches who drained him slowly but surely.

SPOILERS BELOW!

Leeches prove central to the supernatural aspect of the proceedings. The odd symbol, for instance, is based on what the bitemark from a medicinal leech looks like at right. A leech-like god is worshiped by Mr. Shiny and a small statue of the leech-god is found in an obvious nod to The Call of Cthulhu.

The cosmic horror elements escalate all the way to a mad ritual being staged by the killer. That ritual involves an alignment of stars which happens once every 800 years and the sacrifice of a live baby at just the right moment. With the detectives still playing catchup, Mr. Shiny lays his hands on a living infant.

I will refrain from ultimate spoilers here in hopes of encouraging more viewers to take in this underappreciated production. Most negative reviews tend to hate the sudden gory developments after several long sections of slow-burn horror OR hate the slowly building story interrupting the gore-soaked murders.

To me the combination worked just right. I also appreciated the deeper dives into the lore behind the leech-worshiping and a creepy cave in which unspeakable events set the killer on his decades-long slayfest.

Strange Harvest may have a niche audience, but that audience should love it.

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