Horror in the High Desert



In 2017, amateur hiker Gary Hinge disappeared with nary a trace. Years after the mysterious disappearance, and hoping to drum up more awareness after interest in his case slowly fizzled out, his friends and family come together with the police assigned to his case to create a documentary about Gary and his subsequent disappearance.



All right, so, full disclosure: I WAS planning on watching more of those god-awful Witchcraft movies this month. I’d even gone to the trouble of saving all of them (yes, I’d found ALL of them) to my various watch-lists (because of course they’re scattered all over the place and not all on the same platform.) But wouldn’t you know it, almost everything past the first four have disappeared from the free streamers. Except for 7, oddly enough. But as we like to do the right thing around here (and because we have a mild case of OCD), we’ll be DAMNED if we watch this horrible series out of order. It just wouldn’t be right. So that project is on hold until all the little bastards of the bastard series come back (the bastards). But since we were already planning on torturing ourselves this month, I guess that means that in the meantime we’re…uh… gonna be watching some found footage films. Yay rah.

Anyway…

Horror in the High Desert is an American docu-horror from 2021 that was actually recommended  to me by a friend last October. And they have pretty good taste in horror movies and haven’t let me down yet. So I hoped (and prayed) that the stars would align once again, thus bringing forth a good viewing experience. Cause as we all know that’s not always the case with these “found footage” horror films. Lord knows I’ve watched some real stinkers. Thankfully though, this one I liked. Though I can easily see how this one might seriously annoy certain folks who seek out the genre, because Horror in the High Desert isn’t presented as your typical ‘found footage’ horror film. Which, honestly, I kind of appreciated.



So, to clarify, this isn’t your typical ‘shaky-cam’ found footage film. Because, oh, I’d say around 80+% of the movie is actually filmed like your standard documentary. And no, I don’t mean ‘documentary’ like other found footage films use the term ‘documentary’. This isn’t a movie where a small group of people, often suffering from petty personal problems that the viewer is slowly forced to become privy to against their will, decide to go off into some unknown, mysterious location to film a “documentary” and then film every mundane thing they were doing until something eventually comes along and we then get to watch something horrible happen to them.

No, instead this film is presented more as a true-crime doc, with establishing shots, and maps, and videos, and crime scene photos, and interviews with anyone who needed five bucks and was willing to speak on camera. So it’s kind of like watching an episode of Dateline, just without a narrator or host jumping in to add their two cents after every commercial break. Now, you do eventually get to the standard “shaky-cam” section at the end, when it’s finally revealed what happened to Gary, and there are a few other scenes strewn throughout where we see Gary either wandering around or speaking directly to the camera. But that only consists of, hmmm, maybe around 25-ish minutes of the film. And for most of that they used a tripod. Everything else is shown as if it were an actual documentary. So if you’re a fan of true crime, and tired of the overuse of the jittery camera in most of these movies, then boy do I have the film for you! However, that said, I do think you really need to be a fan of true crime to appreciate the other 60 minutes of film. Otherwise I suspect that the way that the bulk of this movie is presented is going to be really dull for you. Because it really does feel like a freakin’ Dateline episode.



Now, that being said, if you’re not immediately put off by the real ‘true-crime’ angle and the slower pacing associated with it, the rest of the film is actually very good! Because it really DOES feel like a relatively well put together documentary where the filmmakers went out and interviewed people over a series of days, and gathered data and ‘crime scene’ photos, and took establishing shots…. You know, all that jazz. They even hired actors that look and act like regular people and pause dramatically at several points in the narrative  like, “and then, we made a discovery… *dun dun dun*!” It’s all very well done.



And then you get to the end where they finally reveal what happened to Gary via your standard ‘found footage’ method consisting of shaky-cam filmed in night vision, and even that ends up being well done. Partially because they simply did a good job with things like misdirection (good for them). But also because, up to this point, you’re still trying to figure out what’s going on. Because the only clues the movie has truly given you could point to… well, fucking anything, really. Is it your standard psycho? A crazy meth head? A witch? A ghost? Bigfoot?!?….

I’m not going to tell you in case you want to watch it for yourself. But I will say that I think they did a good job with the reveal and all the creepy noises that led up to it. Though I will admit that I don’t feel like it quite lived up to the hype they built for it. But that may very well just be me.



I think my only real complaint about Horror in the High Desert involved a small narrative point where the film seemed to be trying to heavily imply that Gary was autistic by repeatedly bringing up the fact that he liked trains. Like, a lot. Like he REALLY liked them. Because they brought it up several times, even though that had nothing to do with the hiking excursions that got him killed. It just felt kind of weird for a film from 2021 to potentially dance around the topic like that. Like, either just come out and say it if he was, or stop bringing up the train obsession if he wasn’t, because bringing it up more than once or twice feels like overkill.


Choo Choo, I guess.

But other than that strange story point, I ended up liking Horror in the High Desert. It kept the shaky-cam to a minimum, while still telling its story, which felt like a nice change of pace, honestly. But, like I said, if you’re not into any of those ‘True-Crime’ shows and you really want the shaky-cam, then this may not be your cup of tea. But if you want something from the genre that’s a little bit different, then feel free to give this one a try.

Horror in the High Desert is available on a variety of streaming services.

Oddly enough, despite already spawning two sequels (and possibly a 3rd), there appears to be no official physical media for the film (or its sequels), beyond a signed limited Collectors Edition that has long been sold out.

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