The ending of Strange Harvest revolves around the police finally cornering Leslie Sykes, or Mr. Shiny, intending to put an end to his decade-long killing spree. Sykes began his bloody rampage in California's Inland Empire sometime in the 1990s. Joe Kirby and Lexi Taylor were the lead detectives on the case, and they were always a hundred steps behind Sykes.
The situation became so desperate that whenever Sykes seemed to take a break from murdering random people in the most grotesque ways imaginable, the detectives simply hoped he had died of natural causes or given himself up. The closest they ever came to Sykes—not to catching him, but simply being near him—was when he went to St. Bernadine Medical Center to kill one of his victims, Victoria, who had miraculously survived Sykes' initial attack.
Director: Stuart Ortiz
Writer: Stuart Ortiz
Stars: Peter Zizzo, Terri Apple, Andy Lauer
Later, the detectives and police found Sykes' storage unit, where there were references to Caliban, Azragor, Ophiuchus, and others. In the time it took them to decipher Sykes' plans, he began the final phase of his scheme, which involved murdering a couple, Glenn and Stephanie Courtland, kidnapping their son, Sawyer, and taking him to the San Bernardino National Forest, the same place where Sykes had started everything.
Thus, Strange Harvest presents many unexplained elements to make Sykes' plan seem complex, most of which are not explained in detail. Therefore, their relevance to the plot remains a mystery. For example, there is much talk of the Shakespearean character named Caliban, whose name is spelled Kaliban in the film, but no human-monster hybrid is actually seen anywhere. From what I've gathered, in The Tempest, Caliban was a monster who lived on an island and whose mother was a witch named Sycorax. After his mother's death and his home being invaded by Prospero, Caliban supposedly attempted to rape Prospero's daughter, Miranda.
In retaliation, Prospero enslaved Caliban and brutally punished him with the intention of making him his follower. Caliban then turned to Stephano for help, but upon realizing that Stephano was neither equal to nor superior to Prospero, Caliban began to treat Prospero as his god. I don't know how this relates to the Sykes saga. He clearly isn't referring to himself as Kaliban, is he? He's saying that his god's name is Kaliban. So, perhaps this god experienced the same character arc as Shakespeare's Caliban, and since Sykes has read The Tempest, he named his god "Kaliban." Okay, after that, there are several mentions of Azragor, which seems to originate from the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons.
It's a demonic deity that lives in some kind of void—though it doesn't resemble a giant leech at all—and grants favors to anyone who engages in insane levels of bloodshed and violence. We see Sykes killing people and draining their blood, and we also see his "god" emerging from what looks like an abyss in outer space; so it makes sense that he calls this "thing" Azragor. "Thorn of Time" was mentioned, which was probably taken from a mobile game called Arena of Valor, but since there isn't much information about it and I don't have the ability to play it, I can't do anything about it.
"The Star Wanderer" was supposedly a reference to Robert Bloch's short story, which featured an intergalactic vampire who was summoned by the story's narrator during his search for inspiration for a story; yes, very meta. From this perspective, Sykes is clearly the narrator, probably looking for some kind of stimulus, and since the entity he summons comes from outer space, he calls it "star wanderer." I didn't find anything about the "Scriptures of Valeel" or "Drag aul"; feel free to inform me in the comments. As for Ophiuchus, yes, it's real.
It's a real constellation where it looks like a man is holding a snake. However, the idea that Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury form a kind of triangle with Earth at the center every 800 years, thus forming the triangular symbol that Sykes constantly drew, is questionable. There is a rare phenomenon called "the great conjunction" where Jupiter and Saturn come very close together, but I don't know if Mercury is involved in all of this.
In short, all of this means that Sykes's killing spree was part of his plan to summon an entity that was probably trapped somewhere in outer space as punishment for something it had done in its home realm, so that it could quench its thirst for blood on Earth. Perhaps there was some kind of rift in the space-time continuum at Joshua Tree National Park that allowed this entity to communicate with Sykes and plan its arrival on a planet teeming with life.
At the end of Strange Harvest, Sykes took Sawyer to a location in the San Bernardino National Forest where he had erected three triangular pyres to burn the baby. Police officer Pearce and his two colleagues, responding to a 911 call, arrived at the location to apprehend Sykes. But they were ambushed. One of the officers was killed, another was wounded, and Pearce was incapacitated. Sykes believed he was safe and proceeded to sacrifice Sawyer. He almost succeeded, as the aforementioned entity, Azragor, began to emerge from a portal in the sky, causing psychological and physiological reactions in anyone who looked directly at the phenomenon. However, Kirby and Lexi managed to locate the sacrificial altar, shoot Sykes, and save Sawyer.
When they went to check on Pearce and his wounded colleague to see if they were alright, Sykes seemed to vanish into thin air. Eventually, Sykes' body was found in a stream, his face disfigured by leeches—something he himself had used on one of his victims, Dennis Zao—and the bite marks resembled the triangular symbol that appears throughout the film, making him difficult to identify. Kirby said that forensic experts confirmed it was Sykes' body based on fingerprints and DNA analysis. His body was cremated, but no one claimed his remains.
That said, the police received a letter from Sykes, promising to restart his "harvest" of murders and attempt to bring Azragor to Earth, likely in 800 years, because that's when our planet will be at the center of the triangle formed by Saturn, Jupiter, and Mercury. Since the letter was dated two days before his death, Lexi said that Sykes hadn't resurrected to send it. He must have anticipated his own death and sent the letter, which only reached the police after his passing, thus creating the illusion that he was still alive. However, Kirby, Lexi, and everyone else affected by Sykes were certain that he was dead.
What do I think? I think Sykes is still alive. I mean, think about it. The case dragged on for three damn decades, making all the police authorities look incredibly incompetent. Who's to say the police didn't pull an unidentified corpse from the morgue and claim it was Sykes to save face? Sure, the police had Sykes' fingerprints, but his DNA? I don't think the police had his DNA or his family's. So, what did they compare the corpse's DNA to? As far as I know, you need to have the criminal's DNA, or their family's, already registered in the system so that once they're caught, there's something to compare their DNA to.
If you don't have any point of reference, how can you identify someone through their DNA? So, yeah, I don't think Sykes is actually dead. Lexi and Kirby were certain there was nothing supernatural involved, but all the recordings found showed that there were many inexplicable things related to Sykes. If Azragor was impressed by Sykes' work, perhaps he kept him alive. Meanwhile, Kirby, Lexi, and the rest of the police department decided to give Sykes' victims and the entire Inland Empire region some kind of closure by declaring Sykes dead. I mean, even if Sykes had transformed into some kind of immortal creature that would start "harvesting" again for Azragor, given that the next great conjunction would occur in about 800 years, Sykes and his killing spree would technically be under someone else's jurisdiction. Therefore, there was no problem in issuing a statement saying that Sykes was dead because, technically speaking, he would be inactive for the next few centuries.
If you stayed until the end of Strange Harvest, you must have seen the post-credits scene where Kirby was hiking in Joshua Tree National Park. He had marked several points on his map, most of which were dead ends, because he was looking for caves. Before heading to the Coxcomb Mountains, since his chances of finding these natural underground cavities there were quite high, the recording ended. So we never found out why he was doing what he was doing. Earlier in the film, Kirby and Lexi had interviewed Jared Kelly, a friend of Sykes, who had said that Sykes was fond of hiking and climbing. Apparently, during one of Sykes's excursions, he stumbled upon these red lights in a cave, which seemingly prompted him to embark on this murderous spree that would last for the next three decades.
Comments
Post a Comment