Horror in the High Desert (2021)

SPOILERS, STOP READING AND WATCH THIS MOVIE IMMEDIATELY!!! I wandered into Horror in the High Desert on a bleary night’s trek about the internet, looking for something to look at. Nowadays I tend to default to true-crime content (“content,” we call it). With true-crime, even if the production values are down, which they are more often than not, many times the cases themselves make up for it in terms of interest values. I thought Horror in the High Desert was pretty good, but I have to admit it fooled me and that might have been exactly what made it work. When I checked in over at IMDb, I found a clear line of demarcation: those who knew ahead of time what they were getting into didn’t like it much (overall 5.4 with 3,400 ranking). Those fooled by it, like me, did tend to like it, writing reviews and rating it with an average closer to 8.0. Among other things it makes this a tricky review to write. In general, I’m more impatient than sympathetic with people who get mad about spoilers (especially things that are decades or centuries old), but at the same time I have to admit that some of my best movie/reading experiences are “unspoiled,” that is, entering them without a clue. LAST CHANCE STOP READING NOW! The fact is that this picture is not true-crime at all, but rather another found-footage horror. I had my qualms about the story as it unspooled, involving a hiker who disappeared. In retrospect it’s easy to see—now that I know—how a lot of it even verges on true-crime parody. Notably the interviews are off, a little too hysterical. But there’s a lot of cringy stuff all over true-crime anyway, and this story moves swiftly with alluring clues and mysteries. The last 20 minutes were as scary as anything I can remember seeing in a while. It’s also when I realized the picture is probably fiction, although I certainly enjoyed the round of terrors it provided in the moment and immediately after. But the bloom comes off the rose here pretty fast in terms of final judgment. It also puts me in a bit of a muddle. I truly enjoyed it, but immediately began to think less of it once I knew more. Would I have had the same reactions if I had understood what it was going in? Frankly, I’m not sure I would have even looked at it, nor have I even been tempted to go back and look at it again for a better sense of how it was done. How it was done is that I’ve been watching a lot of true-crime for some time and adjusted my expectations for that. The case isn’t even as interesting as a lot of disappearances. But it was good enough, it hooked me enough, and then it fooled me enough that it produced the kind of scares I like to get from horror movies. Surprise has a lot to do with it.