Horror in the High Desert is a 2021 American film written, produced, and directed by Dutch Marich, in the pseudo-documentary format, and featuring found footage elements about the mysterious disappearance of a hiker in the High Desert region of Nevada.
Plot
In the style of a documentary film, the first part focuses on the police "missing person" report of amateur hiker Gary Hinge: Toward the end of July 2017, Gary hiked to an unspecified area in the Great Basin Desert (Nevada). His starting point was the town of Ruth and his target was presumably a cabin he had approached on a previous expedition. When he was two days past his estimated return date and did not return home, his housemate Simon Rodgers alerted Gary's sister, Beverly Hinge, who in turn notified the police. More than a week had passed since Gary had last been seen.
Initially, the police conducted a search based on the last GPS location of Gary's cell phone. Local and state police were involved, as well as park rangers and even volunteer groups. A few days later, it was reported that Gary's truck had been found, 55 miles from his departure in Ruth, Nevada, at the end of a dirt road at the bottom of a small hill. This finding prompted search parties, who covered large areas on foot, by helicopter and with the use of drones. None of the groups were able to find any trace or indication of Gary's location. When several more days passed without any news, the police terminated the search, as they considered that the chances of finding Gary alive were already practically nil, due to the fact that he used to travel with minimal supplies, water and equipment, which left him at the mercy of the weather (the hottest time of the year) and other dangers, such as the local fauna or the fact that there are multiple abandoned mining pits in the area. As time went by, the media stopped reporting on it. Subsequently, Beverly hired a private investigator, William 'Bill' Salerno, so that the case would not be abandoned. A reporter from a local media outlet, Gal Roberts, decided to convince her editor to keep on top of the story, lest it be forgotten as a "cold case".
Thus, the investigation then focused on the clues that could be obtained from the truck, now considered a crime scene. Two aspects stood out; first, numerous fingerprints that did not match Gary Hinge's were found all over the truck, especially on the steering wheel. In addition, a trail of barefoot footprints, also not matching Gary's, was found. Since the John Doe's fingerprints did not match any database, the police found themselves at a dead end. In parallel, Bill Salerno started digging into Gary's social networks and Gal Roberts finds a promising clue in the video blog where Gary used to post his hiking and survival adventures, under the alias "Scorpion Sam". The hiker had some 50,000 followers, a fact unknown to his family and people close to him. Several of his readers believe they have some idea about Gary's final whereabouts, and that the question about his final destination could be related to some of his publications.
In the next to last of the published videos, Gary appears in frame from his home, narrating a very unusual experience, which had left him very disturbed: In his last excursion, he had been walking for three days in an unknown area, when he noticed the smell of smoke. Following that trail, he found a dilapidated-looking cabin, as if abandoned, but with smoke coming out of an old chimney. However, a sense of "imminent danger" caused him to move away from the site and make camp away from the area. The next morning, Gary reported that he found a trail of barefoot footprints, and on the way back to his truck, he felt he was being watched, and even felt he was being followed. This publication had a lot of comments, most of them negative, where followers expressed serious doubts about Gary's account, questioning why he had not recorded anything and did not present any evidence; another large number of comments were from users demanding him to give the coordinates of the place and another part of the visitors of his blog challenged him to come back. Feeling the victim of cyber-bullying and visibly affected, Gary recorded and uploaded one last video, explaining that he would not give the exact location of the mystery cabin, since he did not want to encourage inexperienced people to venture into those desert regions, and informed that he would return to the site, accompanied by his video camera and a gun for protection.