Is Horror in the High Desert Real? This Movie Messed With Us | Feature Friday

Courtney Pearl (00:00)
Parallel frequencies with Just Blane and Coco and we are actually not in studio today. We are in our local coffee shop, Land of a Thousand Hills. I love this spot. So cozy. I know. You guys love hanging out here with us? We're just chilling, working. Honestly, like this is what we're gonna do for now. Here, we're gonna just bring a chair. So if anybody out there, if anybody are freqs out there want to come sit with us, have coffee and talk movies, we can do that. And today, Feature Friday.

where we break down some whatever we want really. But whatever we want, big old question mark, whatever. But what I love about Future Friday is it's the weekend. I know. Are you guys excited? I am because you know what happens this weekend? And it happened today. Resident Evil. ⁓ yeah. Requiem came out. Yeah. And that's my favorite video game franchise probably ever. I'm already a couple hours deep. That's why I look tired. I was up past midnight playing it. But I can't wait.

I can't wait to get the kids to bed. Maybe I can get them to sleep at about eight o'clock Friday night and then wake up Monday morning when school starts. No, we won't do that. But I am. so hyped about this. didn't see you're dreaming. You think that's going to happen? No, that never happens. Yeah. Today, though, Feature Friday is a fun one. Yeah, a fun one for the freqs. And I don't know if everybody out there is saying it, but.

my gosh. Today we're heading to the desert. I ain't talking about Vegas desert or like Coachella desert. I'm talking about this desert out there where your phone has no bars and neither do you. There's no bars out anywhere. No, there's nothing. This is. Trust me. I've driven through Nevada enough times in my life to know that you have to be somebody very special to live out there. I. Special kind of person because I have driven through Nevada. You probably have too. yeah. And it's just a lot of.

Nothing. There's a lot of country there that is open space, desert. You could get real lost. And the movie we're talking about is Horror in the High Desert. You turned me on to this. I have seen this movie. Wait, we have to say if you haven't seen it yet and you're just tuning in to watch, pause and watch. Yes. Go into it thinking this is a real documentary because if you think that it is like I did.

Everybody who turned me on to it was like, this is a documentary. You got to watch this. And I was like, I think that's why I didn't watch it because I see I've seen this movie for years. Seen the, you know, the popping up. Yeah. On prime and everywhere else. And I'm like, don't want to watch a documentary. It's too boring. But this one, if you have seen it, you already know. You already know what this is. Yeah. You figure it out. But this movie.

does not kick your door down, it waits. It did feel like it kind of let you walk into the dark by yourself, right? Like it's out there. I gotta ask Coco, what is it about these found footage films that get under our skin so much? Like we've seen it a hundred times.

When it's done right, though, feels illegal to watch something like this. Yeah. It feels like I can't believe that I'm actually getting a peek into somebody's life. Yeah. Or it feels really intimate. It feels really vulnerable. Yeah. And you feel first-person fear. Like, you're watching the camera show what it would be like to be in the desert. Mm-hmm. The second one, too. We're going to talk about one and two with a flashlight. And all you see

Revealing to you little by little is just the flashlight reflecting off the sagebrush. Yeah. I was lost. Immediately I'm lost. I'm like, whoa, where are we? What's going on? You can't see past the next sagebrush, the next thing. It's darkness. I think that's part of it. That's part of the scariness of this film. And let's talk about this film because the setup was it is a documentary and it feels real. It plays like a true crime.

Documentary talking heads, interviews, maps, still photos, calm procedural energy. There's a man named Gary Hinge. He disappears in the Nevada desert after claiming he found something out there. And that's where you're not sure. You're still watching this and you're thinking of some documentary. I'm going tell you the first tip where I knew it was a mockumentary. And it's just me being me, but it's when they bring the the journalist in and she says she works for, she worked for a radio station called

in it, whatever the call letters were, was like, that's not a real. I'm like, wait a minute. I'm like, well, see, most people wouldn't catch that. And I caught that early on. So I was like, is this, but I was still questioning, like, is this thing real? It was based off of a true story. Yes. Kind of similar. Similar story. You got the guy's name. was his name? Kenny Veach. There you go. Was out. Same thing was like a YouTube blogger showed survivalist skills was out in the Nevada desert. He had.

claimed to come upon a cave. Not a little hut like they show in this movie. But he was like, this was a weird, weird cave. It just gave me a weird feeling. He said something about a buzzing feeling. If you know anything about energy, which I do, and I think all of you do too, whether you admit it or not, you feel things. If you're sensitive to that, you just pay attention to what's going on in your body, your intuition, what your gut is telling you.

You can go into certain spaces and you just feel off. You know that? Like it just feels like something either happened here or there is some kind of vortex of energy happening and you get either extremely tired or like that buzzing feeling where you're just like energized. And he claimed to have found this cave but he didn't get any footage of it. So he said, I'll go back and find it. And he went missing. So it caused a lot of YouTube.

followers and people to be like, let's go try to find this cave. And they were all out there. You know, ⁓ obviously authorities had to be like, whoa, if you don't know what you're doing, please don't go out in the desert. That's not a good idea. This is the high desert. And let's get that correct because the high desert is not the same. This is yeah, this is like not somewhere normal people go. And they make sure to tell you that I love how this movie takes its time. It builds the credibility, like I said, with the interviews and all this.

It earns your trust is what it's doing. Absolutely. And you start thinking, OK, this is real. This does feel real. That's the trick, though. It weaponizes normalcy. There's no soundtrack screaming at you, no flashy editing. A lot of this stuff is just space. Like it gets to breathe. You see the camera footage of, like you said, the light reflecting off the bushes. And those are not cut to where you just see what you're supposed to see.

You've got to sit and watch minutes and minutes and minutes of this stuff. Yeah. And you're like, what am I doing? Slow drags, lots of silence. And that's what I'm saying. just builds the intensity because you're like, something's going to happen any second. That space. Sometimes it doesn't happen. Yeah. That space that they created is scary. That's what's making it so damn scary. The desert itself. The desert itself is a character in this movie. Yeah. for sure. documentary, documentary. I'd be embarrassed to admit, but I'll just tell you.

coming to find this movie was my parents telling me about it because someone at their work or something told them about it. You gotta watch this documentary. Well, it's on Amazon Prime. As a documentary. category documentary. So my parents, pretty sure, watched the entire thing thinking it was a documentary. And my dad was like, this will creep you out. You gotta watch it, you gotta watch it.

My parents are kind of into this kind of stuff. So I'm like, all right, yeah, I'll totally watch it. So I went into it thinking it was a documentary. % until I think it was the very last scene. It was when they started showing it or him or whatever you want to call it. The thing that we're all scared of. When it showed it, I think that was the first time I went.

Wait a minute. I don't know about this. And that's when I started Googling. And I was like, wait, what is this? What is this? No. And I was shocked, shocked that it wasn't real because, for example, Tonya Williams Ogden plays Beverly, Gary's sister. Yeah. I'm like, somebody give her an award. Yeah. Yeah. I was bought in. The interviews with the people were so realistic.

just like you would expect to see in a documentary. Their answers to questions, their cadence of speaking, everything was so natural. I absolutely 100 % bought that it was real. I mean, there's been other mockumentaries out there before. Yeah, but they're pretty mockumentary, right? They mock a documentary. So you kind of get like, oh, know, it's funny. What is the best in show? Was that a mockumentary? There's final tap. Final tap, final tap, two now. Sequel, but this is not the same type. I mean, you're sure those are comedy. Yeah.

And this is very clear. Yeah. But this is more of.

horror movie. It's hard to describe what this movie actually is. And Gary Hinge, he didn't go out in the movie here and find a cave. He found like a ⁓ hut. What is this thing? It's awful. Hermit hut. And you're thinking, you're thinking like somebody lives in here and nobody should be living out here anywhere where they're at. And that's where he goes back to find. Yeah. And you can tell this guy, is he not one of the nicest? He's one of the nicest people.

He's like this sweet, calm, innocent sweetheart, knows how to survive in any conditions. He's a badass, really. He's a quiet badass. Probably a little bit on the spectrum in the best way, because he's got these ⁓ skill sets and these niches. He's really into trains. There's certain things that just kind of hint at, you know, he's probably a little bit of a loner in society, but he's extremely skilled and smart. He kind of reminded me of Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory.

except for not quite as eccentric. Not as scientific. think. There you go. I think the scientific part ⁓ for him was the survival. Yeah. That's the difference in him and a shelter. But they had the same. fixation on that one topic. But let's talk about when he does go to this desert, because like I said, it is a character. It's ancient. Doesn't care about you. Doesn't care about anybody out there. It doesn't care about your GoPro. Doesn't care about any of his cameras. There's something.

deeply unsettling about wide open spaces and not knowing what's what's really out past the past the sagebrush or past the next evil because that's when you can really feel terror not known in the unknown there's nowhere to hide also yeah and the fact that whoever is in this cabin looking thing they they're equipped they know what they're giving out here and they know

That's the thing. You don't know where you are in all this. Yeah. you're you're disorienting in the first person view of Gary Hinch, you're looking like she said earlier, you see the reflection of those flashlights and all this. You don't know where you are. But guess what? Whoever is doing whatever they know where they're at. They know what they're doing. Yeah. And that's even more scary because you're like, you can feel the skin crawl around any tree that could be like right behind you. You would never know it. That kind of feeling. And I think they did a really good job of

Amplifying that even more in the second movie. Yes, they did Minerva. the second one, I was like, how could they top it? And they did. With? 100%. What'd you think about, what'd you like about it? The Minerva? Well, freqs out there will know. When it comes to horror movies, less is more. In my opinion, right? Seeing the creature, seeing the thing, seeing it kind of takes away a little bit of the fear. So you're like, I saw it, so therefore I can.

I know what I'm facing now and the fear kind of lessens a little bit. Yeah, yeah. So in the first one, like I said, I knew when we saw him, it, when we saw it, it was a little bit like, ⁓ which before that, I will say with the eerie singing noises and things, was like behind a, I was like biting my pillow, like trying not to close my eyes. Yep. But then when I saw him, I was like,

Okay. What is this? It's a little bit less, but I think they did a better job in the second one of not showing you it. It was so much more elusive, like the headlights of the car and you just see the shadow of it, or you saw something pull away from the glass. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You couldn't see what it was. You just saw kind of a shape or like a ghostly, almost ethereal figure that just kind of whoosh.

You never catch that glimpse. think also in part two, they did. They even let the scenes breathe a little more. Like some of the stuff inside the trailer with Minerva. And that she's recording and some of the videos that she's sitting with her sister and all. I love that kind of stuff because they did let it breathe and it wasn't just like jump scare after jump scare after jump scare. It's like, ⁓ let me make as a filmmaker, they're saying, let me make you watch this and pay attention to the details. And I did. Yeah. And that's what Pay attention to every black shadow.

as this camera, this found footage in the tape that we're watching, it's scanning that basement with all the stuff in it, but there's these dark spaces again that you don't know what's back there and you're like honed in. What is in there? Once again, it's the unknown. And here's the thing, this is why this movie really works, both of them. Actually, there's four of these movies. I've seen one, two, and four. More fun to be had. Number three was still costing money, so.

I had to wait on that one, but I've seen one, two and four and they're all great, but they understand that fear is anticipation. Yes. And it's building up. It doesn't show you the monster. Like Coco said, shows you the possibility of the monster taps into something primary. Yeah. And that's what paintings in the second one showing those. I mean, just tapping into the psyche of like what we all fear. Those paintings were.

And here's the thing about that because we're wired to fear what we don't understand. And that's what this, the pain teeth, all of this was, was stuff that people didn't understand. Stuff you can't fully see. Think about it being a kid when you're a kid in a dark room. Clothes is not scary unless you saw something. Yeah. Or like the shape of your sweater hanging on the doorknob might look like a human figure. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, the fireman feeling around in the dark. That part was just... tops. And actually, as a kid, a kid, like the closet isn't... It's not scary because you did see something. It's scary because you didn't. And that's what this movie is. 90 minutes of being in the closet. That's exactly A dark closet. Not knowing what's in there with you. And that's where it's fun. Is this... Is it supernatural? Is it something worse?

That's where it's kind of fun to me. That's where this movie's fun is trying to guess. I even texted you when I was watching. was like, I hope it's witches. You remember that? was like, I hope it's witches. But you don't really find out. What do you do kind of later on? Yeah. Yeah. Well, but even like it doesn't answer all of the questions it ⁓ in the second movie with all of this found footage, these tapes that they find in the canvas bag and they're kind of running, running through those. Someone is running those videos. Some

man, person who is pointing a gun at one of the victims and leading her into the woods. You get this idea that he's kind of treating these creatures in the woods or in the desert like a pet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we don't know who that guy is. Who is that? Whose hand is it that pulls up and pulls that string to turn on the light in the basement? We don't, we're not, won't find out. Unless it's in part three and we haven't seen that because it costs money.

Yeah. So maybe it is. the freqs that they've seen part three, let us know if it's in there. I've seen car four, it's not in that. Yeah. But this is like a guessing game the whole way through. You're like, is this some cult? Is this some inbred like we've seen in?

That's my theory. My theory, because that comes back to my favorite X-Files episode that was banned from television after it aired, was the incest episode where it was like ⁓ families of people living out in backwoods or, you know, and they basically inbred individuals who have learned to survive out there in the desert. That's my guess. They're so equipped to be out there. And that's what I'm saying.

The movements of some of the images as you see them like walking and you you get this impression that they're not physically. Yeah, the little bit or something something's going on and that's probably from Embrey. But like we've seen in the Hills have our eyes and types of movies like that. That's why picture. But I did hope it was witches. Let's also give some credit where credit is due here. Indie film with damn near no budget. Yeah. And you can see it's no budget. It's like you can tell like there's no production.

perfectly messy. I love that. I love that the found footage is really noisy and clunky. It's found. And it really does feel like, like some amateur person just running a camera and, you know, kind of dropping the camera. yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, exactly that. But it really showed that you don't need money to scare people. You need restraint. Yeah. lot of filmmakers out there making horror movies are given too much. They're putting too many jump scares.

too much of this and that. You don't need it. Like you said, less is more. And the more you restrain yourself as a filmmaker, you can make these scarier movies. A24 is great about that. These horror, the high desert series, this, I will say, probably one of the best horror movies I've ever seen. best found footage. I'm going to just say it. I think of all the found footage, anything that I've ever seen, these are the top. Freaks.

What's the best found footage movie out there? want somebody out there to tell. Tell me if there's a better one. the comments up, because I'm a huge fan of found footage movies. Yeah. All the way back to the Blair Witch Project, of course. But there's been, I guarantee there's thousands of these movies out here. I've seen a ton. And I can't say Horror in the High Desert is my favorite, because I probably would and then be like, oh, but what about this? What about that? about that? I mean, but this one really. I want to see what competes.

So if there's something that competes with it, I'd love to know because that means I need to be watching it. Yeah. This movie, four of them, really did stand out. And even that first movie, the final footage that we see, that final sequence, simple. There's nothing crazy going on. There's no special, there's none of that going on. It's just enough. But it lingers and it sticks with you. And if you watched it alone at night, you probably checked the windows and...

You probably looking around. I was watching it the entire time like this. I watched this in a hotel room. I remember I was in a hotel and I was was racked up and bolted the doors up and everything. I'm like, no, man, this is not. You didn't have anybody with you. No. Where I have my husband and I was like, can you just tell me what's happening? I'm like, you're not on it. Can you just describe it to me so I know something's happening, but I don't have to actually see it. I also love these types of movies right here because.

A movie like Horror in the High Desert is going to be, there's going be people out here watching right now, probably not the freqs, might be somebody else, but they're going be watching and be like, this movie is awful, nothing happened. And the other half of people out there, the freqs, will be like, I couldn't sleep. But I love when they get that polarization in a movie because it's hard to see, it's hard to think about how can that same movie spark those two different feelings.

Fear is personal is where it really comes down to and what scares you may not scare somebody else. And if nothing happened to you, it could have been a lot of stuff that happened to somebody else. And it's happening inside your mind. So if you listen right now or like just like this movie was too slow and others are nodding their head. They're like, yeah, that ending wrecked me. Both reactions valid. That's what's cool about it. If you hated this movie, you're allowed to hate it. If you loved it, you're allowed to love it.

That's what makes this community fun. That's what makes the freqs out there fun for us. Yeah, and I think you're right. I think that maybe I'm saying that I think this is the best horror movie because it tapped into what I fear more. There you go. I mean, if it was alien abduction. Not so much, Not so much. Like, I'd be like, oh, this is interesting and fun. But I wouldn't be like, this is like making me stay awake I'm going tell you, there's some great found footage, alien Area 51 films out there. There's one I call Area 52, I think. Sure, it's great.

It may not tap into my fear as much, but these ghostly images in the high desert like that and the way that that was portrayed with the flashlights and the... I'm still getting chills about the firemen feeling around in the dark. ⁓ man. And there's this image. You can barely see it, but you're like, there's something there at the bottom of the stairs. we know it's not natural.

something there and that really taps into what I'm afraid to see in the dark. What? What's there? An image? What's not there? yeah. What's not there? Barely an image of what? Is that what we're afraid of? The dark is what we can't see? Yeah. I think it is. It's gotta be right? The more I can't see it, the more scared I am. Maybe? Let's ask the freqs out there. I want to know. I want to know that first. I want to know what really does it.

scare you about the dark, but also let's talk about horror in the high desert. Did the ending work for you? Did you feel the tension? Did you feel the dread that we're talking about? Would you go out there alone and chase a story like that? If you were a YouTuber, my YouTubers out there right now. Yeah. Would you go chase a story like this if you knew something weird was out there because Gary didn't want to go, but they forced him. And that's part of it too, is the peer pressure from these people who turned on him. If the freqs ever turn on me.

I'm coming after you. No, no, no. Yeah. I can't. No, my life is not worth that. Like, no, I think that that kind of goes back to our discussion about Deadstream when we talked about that movie a couple of weeks ago and how he was willing to stay in a haunted house. It's clearly terrifying and clearly possessed with some demon. she's like, you you you've got more views than you've ever had. And he's like, OK, yeah, we'll go with it.

I mean, Gary, ⁓ think his motives were a little more pure. They were. ⁓ Improving himself as a survivalist out in the desert. he... They definitely were because he had people that didn't even know how many followers he had. the guy on DanceStream would have told you, ⁓ this man, like, you can see the difference. Yeah. And he wasn't the one telling his family and friends that he had a channel where he was teaching people survival skills. Yeah.

And this was just, you know, again, found footage after he went missing, but he goes out there, he goes back out there because of comments and things that people left, which were like, you're weak, you're a coward if you don't go find it. And ⁓ maybe that was maybe a little less believable for his character to be like, okay, I guess I'll go back out there. I mean, I guess, but we haven't had that online bullying.

Yeah, I haven't had that experience before. I like to think that I can be like, screw you guys. It'd be hard to. It's hard. The public has turned on me. It is what it is. Yeah. I mean, we're going to get canceled at some point. We can wait our turn. We'll get canceled at some point and you guys can fire at us. Let me tell you why I love this movie and it helps me love this genre of movies. It's because it's not about the gore. It's vulnerability. Being small in a big world is what is going on here.

We all feel this sometimes the desert the desert is it is it's just a metaphor like life gets quiet You think you're chasing something meaningful. Okay, just like Gary we all do this Yeah, suddenly you realize you've went further than you meant to go. Yeah, and you might have got lost I think that's relatable. That's human. and that's something that we can all go through whether it's chasing The supernatural or whatever this is in the high desert or if it's just in life. Yeah

Yeah, I mean, think about Kenny Veach, the original guy who this really happened to. It's kind of like arrogance versus nature. I mean, do we do we really feel like as humans we can dominate nature or do we feel like we're really respecting it when we can go out there and not pass into the territory of nothing bad will happen to me because I'm so smart and I'm so strong and I'm so, you know, and

Nature has a way of cutting you down. Yeah, it does, absolutely. It doesn't have to be a scary, I don't know, creature of some paranormal thing, but it could be just nature itself being like, you thought you could beat me, you're, that's ignorance. What's your final thoughts on this? Have you already had them? I think maybe that was it. I think that was your final thoughts. Final thoughts for me, it's not a flashy movie.

It's not the loudest, it's quiet, but it's going to stick with you. And sometimes these are the types of movies that you need to pay attention to. And I think the other movies out there will follow along. I mean, not that they didn't take from other found footage types of movies, but this is going to actually set a new style, I think. We're going to see more of these horror in a high desert.

Movies? I think. There's gotta be five or six more of these. Sure. They couldn't run out I'm excited for it. I'm here for it. If anything, can get out of the high desert and come to the Utah mountains or whatever, because I think that's just as, ⁓ maybe not. Yeah, well, it might be. I'm not one of those ignorant humans who thinks that I can dominate the black. No, not me, not me either. let me tell the freqs out there.

Stay curious, stay skeptical. Don't believe everything you see is a documentary. Yeah. And maybe don't go hiking alone with a camera in the Nevada high desert. We'll see you next time.