HORROR IN THE HIGH DESERT 2 – MINERVA – Found Footage Review

You know how sometimes you almost hate-watch a movie? Knowing it isn’t going to live up to your hopes but hoping it proves you wrong?

Watching because you feel compelled because you watched the previous entry.

That’s where I am with HORROR IN THE HIGH DESERT 2 – hate watching a movie I was going to otherwise avoid.

Don’t get me wrong, the first film isn’t bad.

At all.
It’s well made, it’s intriguing, and it sets you up for a creepy reveal that…never really comes. It teases and tease and teases and…gives you something…but no answers.

Going in I was already trepdatious but when the director said in an interview that he was looking at this as a series, well, my heart sorta sank because that means he has no interest in wrapping things up but expanding them.

And having now seen the sequel, well, I sorta wonder if he even has an idea where he’s heading.

HORROR IN THE HIGH DESERT 2 picks up after the events of the first film and delves into the case of Minerva, a woman who disappeared in the same region as the events of the first film. She had moved into a trailer near a mining camp where she was going to be at for college work. What she starts to find out though is that something feels off about where she is living and as she starts to hear things she begins to wonder if perhaps she isn’t alone.

There is something deeply frustrating and infuriating when a filmmaker has success with a film and decides that that film will now be there ‘thing’. They may not even know where they are going with it but darn it, it’s their thing and they are going to dig into it until there’s nothing left.

Welcome to the High Desert.

More upsetting is that these are well made films with great pieces that are just missing the last ones to complete this puzzle.

And this is a puzzle.

And it shouldn’t be.

With the second film we are entering into what I think you can call the ‘High Desert-verse’, where the movies don’t have endings so much as teases to more movies.

Great?

We are given pieces of a story but nothing that connects and what does, teases something that doesn’t seem worth this much trouble.

This all feels like it’s one movie.

One story.

That’s being spread too thin.

But is it a good found footage movie?

Sorta, yeah.

If you can get past the mack of details or real ending then sure, it’s pretty decent as a found footage film. No real shaky cam. Creepy moments. Good acting. Well filmed and well made. The ‘documentary’ footage in it is really well done.

It’s just…

There’s nothing HERE!

It’s a story about a story that has no ending.

BOO!

There’s a ghost…but we won’t show it or tell you who it is or where it is but darn it, it’s there.

I sorta feel like the boogieman of it all is just a crazy old man out in the desert.

Wooooooo.

I am kidding.

I think.

I am sure this film series has its fans but for me, I think this may be my last one.

Maybe.

I dunno.

It’s so well made that it’s even more frustrating that it feels so lazy. It’s like the second and third HELL HOUSE, LLC films. Movies that had no business existing but to make sequels because the first was so popular.

Sigh.

It’s on Tubi.

Give it a watch.
Or don’t.

Or whatever.

I think I am good though.

Tapping out.

1.5 out of 5

(rated on the lack of a full feeling film and not its quality. It’s well made and acted but has a lazy wrap up).