Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva



In 2018, just a year after hiker Gary Hinge mysteriously disappeared, a pair of similar tragedies happened in the desert of northeastern Nevada. The first was the strange and tragic death of Minerva Sound, who was found unconscious in her home after a string of strange events. And the second was the disappearance of Ameliana Brasher, who was seemingly abducted off the side of the road by an unknown entity after her car broke down one night. By themselves, the events may seem unconnected. But clues and recordings found at the scene of each incident point to them being linked to Gary’s disappearance just one year earlier.


Thanks, Gary. I’m sure this was all your fault (somehow).

Horror in the High Desert 2 is an American found footage docu-horror from 2023, and is a direct sequel to the original film from 2021. Since I liked the first film well enough, I figured it’d be safe to give the second one a go since it was readily available. And this sequel is indeed very similar to the first, in that it is another documentary styled horror film that’s mainly shot like an actual documentary, and sporadically interlaced with ‘found footage’ segments to help flesh out the story. That part of the film hasn’t changed. Meaning if you’re a fan of the True-Crime genre and liked the last film, then chances are you’ll be perfectly pleased with this movie too, because formatting-wise they’re almost exactly alike. Though they did make some slight refinements to the earlier formula.


Like their captions looking better, for instance.

For starters, the filmmakers must have been reading the online criticism from the first High Desert, because the first major difference you notice is that there is noticeably more of the ‘found footage’ segments. And I don’t just mean like in the first film, where they sort of stuffed the first two thirds with banal clips of Gary talking about hiking and trains on his YouTube page. I mean, there’s a little of that stuff in here too to help build up the plot, like home movie clips and video calls sent to friends. But it’s also packed with more recordings of “hey, did you hear that weird noise?” or “check out this strange thing I found” clips as well. So the creepy aspect that most found footage fans crave is interspersed throughout the movie and not all crammed into the last 20-so-odd minutes of the movie. So that’s nice.


At one point it even enters First Person Shooter mode.

On the downside though, the movie almost feels…eh…unfocused? Incomplete? And I think the main culprit of that was the decision to split the narrative between two different women. And it’s even further muddled by the decision to unevenly split those narratives as well. Because I don’t think that splitting it in the first place was wholly necessary. The first story centered on Minerva honestly seemed strong enough on its own. Evidenced by the film’s subtitle utilizing her name. I do kind of get why they might want to add to whatever overall story they’re aiming for by connecting everything together to create a ‘string’ of incidents similar to what happened in the first film, because that ‘broadens’ the danger and all that jazz. But the result is that we end up with a lot of obnoxiously unanswered questions, to both segments individually and to the narrative overall.



Because we get this whole focused story around Minerva and the weird stuff going on in the desert around the trailer she’s living in. How she starts off happy and excited, but then she’s suddenly suffering from insomnia and headaches. And there are weird noises outside, and she thinks there might be people living in the walls. And THEN we see a tape left by the previous resident of the trailer she’s living in that seems to show he may have had some sort of strange, almost religious connection to the entities seen in the first film, and he may or may not have been kidnapping people and offering them up as some sort of sacrifice, and how there’s also something REALLY strange going on the the trailer’s basement (do trailers usually have basements?).


Well, this one does.

And anyway, they’re really building up the mystery and suspense, and you think the movie is really going somewhere and that you might hear from some ‘experts’ regarding possible explanations for all the weirdness going on and then suddenly….. It’s gone. It gets cut off with an abrupt ending that basically boils down to “and then she died” and quickly moves on to the Ameliana story for the last third of the film. It really sucks. Because it feels like there SHOULD have been some fake ‘experts’ in there somewhere coming up with various theories about what the hell was going on. But nope. Nada. We don’t get that. Instead we shift to a “and then there’s this chick who we think was abducted from her car” segment. And don’t get me wrong. It’s a GOOD segment and very well done. But it’s so short compared to Minerva’s story, or even Gary’s, that it almost feels like an afterthought.



So not only do you get nothing in the way of answered questions from the first segment, but we get even less from the second due to it being so short. And to top it all off, suddenly you get to the end and get the feeling that the movie was intended to be that way, as it seems like this was all done intentionally as a set-up for the third film (and possibly even the 4th that JUST came out in December (2025), but I haven’t gotten that far so I don’t know yet). The point is, some of the decisions made here feel intentionally frustrating and that kinda sucks.


Behold, the film’s version of a conclusion: barren NOTHINGNESS!

So, in short, the ending of Horror in the High Desert 2 kinda annoyed me, since it felt like they purposefully left me in the lurch (even more so than the first film). But the rest of the movie was still pretty good (looks good, sounds good, well acted, all that stuff), and once again the found footage parts (especially the basement and car segments) were very well done. So, especially considering some of the absolute duds I’ve watched, the film still ends up falling on the high end of the genre’s decency scale. Not great maybe, and definitely not as good as the first film, but probably worth at least one watch if you’re in any way a fan of the found footage and True Crime genres. If you’re not already a fan though, I suspect that this one won’t have anything in it that will sway your opinion in the genre’s favor.

Horror in the High Desert 2 is available on a variety of streaming services.

As far as I can tell, much like the first film, Horror in the High Desert 2 is not available on any official physical format, only digitally.

Helpful Links: