Having only very recently dived in to Horror In The High Desert, I thought it best to start making my way through the sequels before I forgot anything about the lore that was established. Unfortunately, I was already too late. It has only been about eight months since I saw that first film, but I'd already forgotten anything that may have been memorable about it. The good news is that this sequel reminds you of the final scenes from that first movie. The bad news is that nothing here matches it.
Exploring a couple of different, and seemingly unrelated, disappearances that happen to have taken place in an area very close to the one explored in the first film. That's really all you need to know. Things are teased, and more things are teased, and it all essentially feels like one shaggy dog story that's been spun out to prepare you for the next instalment in the series, which may or may not be a continuation of the teasing.
While writer-director Dutch Marich does a great job of recreating the documentary format with a mix of authenticity and just the right little details to keep viewers invested, for the most part, he makes a crucial mistake here in leading viewers further away from having one central character to stay close to. The two main characters that we end up spending time with here are two separate individuals who may as well be named "next victim" and "next victim 2". There are some good individual moments, but nothing really feels as if the narrative is moving forward until the very end of the film.
If I didn't already know that this film series was appreciated by one or two friends of mine then I wouldn't be driven to carry on with it. Okay, that's a lie, the OCD part of my brain would insist that I finished what I had started. I wouldn't have any optimism though. But this seems to be a low point, or maybe just didn't work for me as well as it worked for others, and the next instalment, as set up in the last scene here, looks as if it could add some meta-layering that might be enough to draw me further into the dark and twisty storyline unfolding onscreen.
While I didn't hate this, it didn't really work for me as well as I hoped it would. None of the scares were very effective, although there's one moment that resonates with real anguish and trauma in a way that makes it a disturbing highlight of the entire film, I started to lose interest in where the journey was taking me until it seemed to get back on track in the third act, and I feel as if I've been served up a place-holder instead of a proper feature. And if I wanted that feeling I would have revisited one of the Phase 4 Marvel movies released in the past few years.
4/10
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