by Dov Kornits
“Lake Mungo is a masterpiece,” says American filmmaker Stuart Ortiz about the 2008 Australian cult film when we meet to discuss his latest film, Strange Harvest, a creepy AF mock procedural about a serial killer. “Lake Mungo is top tier of horror mockumentary. It’s never been done better than that film. That was always a North Star, certainly in terms of inspiration, the weight that it carries, the power that the film has and also the acting. Any time I would get frustrated, I could watch a scene and go, ‘this is what the caliber has to be. It has to be this good’.”
For his first feature film as solo director (Ortiz collaborated with Colin Minihan on 3 films previously as The Vicious Brothers), the self-described “horror goth for life” took on a mammoth task, and appropriately enough, didn’t rush the process.
“The actual script was very quick,” he admits, saying that it took only two weeks. “But the actual work that went into the movie was writing basically a bible that was the mythology of the occult religion that our character believes in. And it was very in depth. It traced the history all the way back to the beginning of human existence. And then just all the rules and what they believed and the whole philosophy. I also wrote the details of every single crime in meticulous detail. That took about a year. Then I actually went to write the script.
“There’s an internal logic to how all of this kind of stuff works, even when it’s outlandish and ridiculous occult religion stuff,” he comments about how he managed to keep the audience’s attention throughout. “I made sure that there were rules and that it operated on a certain level of logic, because even though you’re really only given minor glimpses of any of this stuff in the film, I think it makes a difference when it actually is thought through as opposed to just being any nonsense that just is spooky and sounds cool when there’s actually something there that sort of makes a little bit of sense. It is more effective, it makes it scarier, it’s more immersive that way.”
Did anyone – like us – believe that the mythology in the film was actually real? “I’ve had tons of people who are unsure and then they go and look it up,” says Ortiz. “I had an actress in the movie who had a small role come up to me and was like, ‘is this real?’ And I was like, ‘you’re in the movie, what do you think?’ I was like, ‘okay, if we’re getting that, that’s probably pretty good’.”
Any particular collaborators on the film who made a significant contribution?
“The mask … I really can’t take any credit for that. That’s all the brilliant work of Jessee Clarkson, who was a production designer on the film. And he also played the character of Mr. Shiny, our serial killer. He first came on the movie just as a production designer, and then we started talking about the mask and the character a little bit, and he kind of was like, ‘well, what do you think of me playing him?’ And I was like, ‘are you an actor? Have you ever done this before?’ And he said, ‘I have actually’, he had played a bank robber character in a James Franco film called The Vault, and he’s wearing a white mask in it. I checked that movie out and I was like, ‘oh, this guy actually has some gravitas’. I was like, ‘for sure you should do it’. And then he got really excited and was like, ‘well, the mask, we got to do something cool’. My only real direction to him on the mask was to keep it simple and try to incorporate the symbol that the killer uses as his calling card’. He just took that and was inspired by Pink Floyd’s The Wall, those weird mutant children at one point, and they have these weird faces, so he kind of ported that in. And then he sent me a picture, and it was the first time, it was the first thing that he sent. And I was just like, ‘wow, that’s perfect’. It’s so simple, yet weird and off-putting in this kind of uncanny valley way.”
Do you feel a bit pissed that a film like Blair Witch Project when it came out, could maintain the sort of allure of a mockumentary format, whereas now it’s much harder to do that kind of thing?
“I was the perfect age when Blair Witch Project came out. I think I was in high school, and the internet was just coming of age then too. And that advertising campaign, with that insane website that made it all look super real. That’s what we wanted, that’s what we hoped for. But I think it’s just very difficult to do a Blair Witch thing in 2025.”
Horror has never been more popular.
“I do feel like there’s a shifting tide. Horror is always pretty popular, but I feel like we’re in some sort of transitional moment right now, not just in horror, but in movies in general, where I think we’ve had a decade of a certain kind of entertainment superhero kind of stuff, the Marvel thing, Star Wars, and I think there’s good stuff there, but I think that people might be getting a little bit tired of the sameness of it all and sort of the safeness of it all, because a lot of that stuff has the edges grounded off.
“Although The Terrifier films aren’t personally my thing, but I think I really respect what they’re doing. And I think it is just indicative of the fact that there’s a real appetite for something that’s outside of mainstream Hollywood. And I think people are just ready for some gnarly horror now. Talk to Me, Bring Her Back, those are real horror films that are dark and bleak and nihilistic, and they don’t pull any punches. And people are really responding to that. And I think that probably also has something to do with the world we’re living in right now. It’s a scary place. There’s a lot of uncertainty about what’s going on. I think people are looking for the real thing right now. They’re looking to really connect with something that’s not fakey, fake horror. I think people are looking for a connection to something real right now.
“Also, horror is a genre where you’re allowed to have an unhappy ending, it’s a great way to explore death, and that’s something that’s always going to be on our minds because we all are going to face that at some point.”
What’s next?
“I’m actively working on a sci-fi horror script right now. And Colin Minihan and I are developing a remake of Grave Encounters, with Justin Long.”
Strange Harvest is available now on Digital and DVD
