Horror in the High Desert

If only there was more footage of Gary, rather than interview after interview whose mission is to delay the inevitable, this movie would be better. But is watchable enough and the final 20 minutes are actually creepy and made with plenty of suspenseful talent.

Don't read anything about the plot. It's not well known, they use actors that not only can act but also look like real people, and it's filmed like a documentary. So let your significant other know you heard about a really good REAL scary documentary. By the end you'll both be watching wide eyed while holding your breath...

This is one of the most disturbingly effective found footage movies I have ever seen. And I have seen my fair share. Why this has such a low rating I have no idea. The acting is convincing, the storyline is enthralling, I have ADHD and never once checked to see how long I was into this film. I'm a seasoned horror movie buff and this is the first time I have been a bit scared especially at the end. Kudos to the director and everyone involved in this film. And no, I was not one of them. I will definitely be checking out more by this director. As I understand there is a part two and three but I'm not sure if it's the same director.

It's the easiest way to make a micro-budget film, do a faux documentary that ends with found footage. You can use a lot of photos instead of actually filming anything, have random location shots where nothing is happening, and you never have to stage scenes with actors, just have people sit and be a talking head. And this one starts off seeming to get everything right. The faux actors are believable, the disappearance at the heart of the plot starts getting mysterious, and then after only about twenty minutes it starts sliding progressively downhill. It don't help when you have all these characters (including an investigative journalist who apparently doesn't know how to investigate anything) talking about how super-intelligent and together the missing character is and when we finally see video of him he talks and acts like he just got out of his "special" class for those of, shall we say, far less than average intelligence. Then we spend the next half hour going nowhere with subplots suddenly abandoned or forgotten about and the mystery becomes rather obvious, and then we conclude with ten minutes of "found footage" which is so poorly shot, directed, and overall underwhelming it kinda makes you angry. Shoulda turned it off when the talking heads kept telling how dramatic one of the missing characters last videos was, and then they just say "that video got accidentally erased"; which I took to mean the actors performance was so horrible they couldn't even use a clip of it. And the climactic found footage is literally as bad as you can get. Unless you get scared staring at the same bush under infrared light. One bush. That's pretty much it. From a solid 8/10 in the first few minutes all the way down to 3/10 says it all.

Horror in the High Desert does a nice slow burn and then becomes fairly unnerving at the film's conclusion. This is only the second "found footage" film I've ever seen, "The Blair Witch Project" being the other. Genre-novice viewer as I am, all I can say is that this is a well-made (if not vaguely similar to "Blair Witch"), and if you stick with it, suspenseful movie. Toward the end, my own tension was palpable. Some of the other reviews here read as if the reviewer was jaded and weary of similarly envisioned "found footage" films. My own opinion is that this is an effectively executed and well-done movie that fans new to the genre will enjoy.