Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva

Horror in the High Desert was a fairly effective horror mockumentary about the disappearance of a hiker that was let down by its ending; A (spoilers!) mutant hillbilly slasher was a poor payoff to all the buildup the rest of the film diligently put together.

 It didn't seem to cry out for a sequel, but Dutch Marich returns to the well with a slightly more ambitious attempt. As explained by Marich's fictional stand-in, Daniel Prince, in a voiceover introduction: ever since the first movie came out, people started calling in with information about other, similar disappearances. When the crew looked into it, they realized "all of this is part of a bigger mystery than (they) could have ever imagined".

 The film primarily delves into the death of Minerva Sound (Solveig Helene), who was found dead in her trailer in the outskirts of a tiny Nevada town, as told by a journalist (Suziey Block, returning from the first movie), Minerva's best friend Cathy (Sami Sallaway), and a couple other witnesses. As with the first movie, the script does a good job of making the case interesting, with a lot of cool and very creepy touches - the main one here being the discovery of a bag in her trailer containing some bizarre-looking paintings, and a VHS tape belonging to a pretty disturbed individual. The contents hint at mass murder and, yeah, a bigger mystery, one that is only implied and never gone into; It's really well handled.

 That's until the film unceremoniously drops Minerva's story about two-thirds in to abruptly focus on a new victim - Ameliana Brasher (Brooke Bradshaw); It never really recovers from that.
 Ameliana's story has got some excellent moments - her death is truly upsetting - and it leads to another long stretch of first person footage, this time belonging to one of the people sent to look for her.
 The problem is not whether Ameliana's story is interesting or scary or not, it's that it very much feels like a side-story that never really adds anything to either Minerva's tale or the developing mystery.

 This lack of focus, and the poor job it does tying up Minerva's story, hurts the movie badly. Other than that it's another pretty good no-budget, extremely slow burn slice of spooky Americana. It's got a great management of tension, excellent sound design, a good approximation of an actual documentary, and an engaging narrative. A second sequel is already in post-production, promising to return to the original case; hopefully it will find a better way to tell its story than this one.