Weekend Haunts...

 

During the weekend, I spent a decent amount of time at Isla Bonita, home of my Words and Lyrics office. I met David_E_MD and had a nice conversation with him about Ladybug Mountain, the very first neighborhood on there.com. David showed me its original location -an area he paid a substantial sum to acquire back in the day. I enjoy hearing these stories about old there and stuff that was going on before I joined in 2009.

Speaking of neighborhoods, I have also visited Crystal Beach a few times. This hood has been steadily growing of late, and I'm glad it's located on a beach instead of a lake. lol

Horror movies and shows are my central topic today, especially those of the found-footage variety. I remember watching The Blair Witch Project in 1999 and leaving the theater with a bad headache. I thought the movie was okay, but not as scary as some of my friends and acquaintances had made it out to be.

Found-footage movies continue to be a staple of the horror genre, and many of of them have enjoyed commercial and critical success over the years. I have really enjoyed the VHS series, and Cloverfield was also a standout in 2008.

Strange Harvest Trailer

A small group of my friends and I met up last Friday evening and watched Strange Harvest, a found-footage movie that I had purchased earlier this year.

Strange Harvest delivers on all fronts, in my opinion. This riveting "docu-horror" had us glued to our seats for one-and-a-half hours. The plot centers on Mr. Shiny," an elusive serial killer who leaves cryptic clues near his victims and is somehow always beyond the reach of law enforcement.

Strange Harvest is definitely not for the squeamish, and one of my friends was surprised how several crime scenes were shown in gory detail. You also start to wonder if supernatural elements are at play as Mr. Shiny's crimes become even more elaborate and bizarre.

In an episode of the Slice of SciFi podcast, Director Stuart Ortiz talked about his film with host Summer Brooks. Ortiz mentioned his love of world building, and revealed postproduction on "Strange Harvest" took 2 years to complete after 20 days of filming. Before even picking up a camera, Ortiz wrote a "bible" of sorts that served as his blueprint for the film; it was painstakingly filled with details and imagery of Mr. Shiny's crimes.

Strange Harvest deftly captures the look and tone of a true-crime documentary, and the lead characters playing detectives are convincing in their roles The ubiquitousness of cameras in our everyday lives adds a heavy dose of realism, and I think true-crime fans in particular are going to enjoy this film.

Slice of SciFi Podcast: Interview with Stuart Ortiz

Most Impactful Found-Footage Horror Movies

1. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

• Impact: The cultural blueprint for viral filmmaking.

• Why It Matters: While Cannibal Holocaust (1980) technically pioneered the format, The Blair Witch Project turned found footage into a global pop-culture phenomenon. Made on a micro-budget of around $60,000, it pulled in nearly $250 million worldwide. Its real genius was its pre-internet marketing campaign—using missing person flyers, fake documentaries, and message boards to convince millions that the three student filmmakers were actually dead or missing. It proved that psychological dread and user imagination are far scarier than high-budget special effects.

2. Paranormal Activity (2007)

• Impact: Modern revival of the subgenre and the birth of a blockbuster franchise.

• Why It Matters: By the mid-2000s, found footage had grown stagnant. Oren Peli changed that with a camera mounted on a tripod in a single bedroom, made for roughly $15,000. By relying on slow-burn tension, stationary surveillance angles, and the dread of silent timestamp countdowns, Paranormal Activity grossed over $193 million and launched Blumhouse Productions into a mainstream powerhouse. It proved that mundane domestic spaces could be turned into relentless engines of suspense.

3. [REC] (2007)

• Impact: Pushing kinetic, claustrophobic immersion to its limit.

• Why It Matters: Directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, this Spanish horror masterpiece brought a relentless, high-octane tempo to the format. Following a TV reporter and her camera operator trapped inside a quarantined Barcelona apartment building during a mysterious outbreak, [REC] eliminated the lag time typical of found-footage setups. Its real-time progression, terrifying night-vision climax, and claustrophobic sound design redefined how fast-paced survival horror could feel.

4. Cloverfield (2008)

• Impact: Proving found footage could support grand-scale, Hollywood-level spectacle.

• Why It Matters: Produced by J.J. Abrams and directed by Matt Reeves, Cloverfield took a format previously reserved for haunted houses or isolated woods and applied it to a full-scale kaiju disaster in Manhattan. By keeping the camera anchored to a ground-level perspective during a massive monster attack, it made urban destruction feel intimate, chaotic, and terrifyingly immediate.

5. Host (2020)

• Impact: The definitive screen-life horror film of the digital era.

• Why It Matters: Filmed entirely during COVID-19 lockdowns via Zoom, Rob Savage’s Host updated the found-footage gimmick for the screen-life subgenre. Running at a lean 57 minutes, it transformed everyday video-calling mechanics—custom virtual backgrounds, app lag, multi-cam views—into ingenious jump scares and atmospheric dread. It showed how adaptable the found-footage premise remains as communication technology evolves.

When the Carrie reboot was announced on Prime, I wondered if there would be anything new under the sun in this episodic series. While watching the show, I appreciated how they updated this version of Carrie for the modern high-school age, especially with social media. That and other things like metal-detector screenings and school-shooter drills made me feel very grateful I attended high school in the 1980s.

A couple quibbles -- as the online bullying goes nuclear via an Instagram account at the high school, I wondered why no one on the staff made a serious effort to shut it down. Another thing I raised an eyebrow at was the prom scene -- you would assume a venue like that would be locked down like Fort Knox given all the fractious relationships and turmoil leading up to the big dance.

These are not dealbreakers, however. The acting overall is excellent, and it was cool seeing Scream alum Matthew Lillard as the high-school's principal. The characters are very well-written, and even the villains have some sympathetic angles that are explored.

Mike Flanagan, who directed some of the episodes, said in an interview that he would like the series to run for two more seasons. Some of you may remember attending my Halloween event in October of 2025, where we screened Mike Flanagan's Hush. Stephen King regards Flanagan as the best adapter of his stories and novels to date.

Carrie: Spoiler-Free Review by Drumdums

Another fun event I took part in on the weekend was Lady Misty's "Psycho Quest." In this adventure, you are tasked with filling in the names of infamous serial killers from movies. I consider myself pretty well versed in this genre, but a few challenging ones required some Googling. I also enjoyed discovering which of these horror movies Lady Misty personally watched on the big screen.

Answering the questions in total darkness was also a creepy touch I appreciated. Everyone who completes the quest is entered into a prize drawing. Lady Misty knows her cinematic serial-killers quite well, although I do not think she has seen Mr. Shiny yet.

Speaking of prize drawings, my icing on the cake this weekend was winning a Halloween buggy via a dice roll. The buggy came from the organizers of the Skee-Ball event I attended last week. Much appreciated, guys!