Found Footage February Day 5 Horror on the High Desert

Day 5

Horror on the High Desert

Growing up when I did, our family would spend a few summers, like a week at least. Renting a cabin, sometimes setting up a tent, and one time we drove an RV and camped in the woods. Specifically we always camped out at Mammoth lake.

It’s very beautiful, and we did a lot of exploring, hiking, sight seeing, and fishing. Was a lot of fun and I love those memories. It’s also part of why I enjoy living here in Washington, because the smell outside of all the trees, especially just before it rains, and right after. It takes me back.

The entire time we camped growing up, and all of our outtings into the wilderness.

Of all those times from the age of a child to being a dumbass teenager.

I have never witnessed, heard, or even glimpsed as many wild animals, as I have while living here.

Seriously two of us have seen a bear now while driving. Deer can walk right beside your car like “Hey how’s it goin”, mountain lions growl from the woods sometimes, and several people including a special kind of stupid ex of my cousins swears they either saw, or heard bigfoot.

So when a found footage film comes along that takes place out in the vast wilderness. I have some expectations, sure. I also have a mild joy in the hopes that there will be aliens, or bigfoots, and somewhere along the line. Maybe just wild ass animals on cocaine rampaging. Oh also mutated monsters.

Now we have managed a pretty good Bigfoot film, so I’d be down with more squatch action. But we shall see what we get.

I just also would like to say that I feel sorry for this generation. Mine grew up with DELIVERANCE, and the idea that in the wooded hills, Hillbilly moonshiners were out and looking to make you squeal like a pig and play big in a blanket with your butthole.

Then the next generation had The Hills Have Eyes, so you had mutated rapist cannibals to be wary of. Now though?

Now your biggest concern is. No cell coverage. 10% battery life.

I’m not saying you need to be wary as we were of the woods and the potential for hillbilly buttfuckery. But I am saying y’all need something to startle you and pucker your buttholes while in the woods.

But I guess cocaine bears and men on bath salts is enough for most.

SO LETS BEGIN!

The Film

So we have a documentary style film being done, covering the disappearance of Gary. Gary Hinge is a man who enjoys hiking through Nevada and went missing while out on one of his excursions. The film documents the weeks following his disappearance, as the networks weren’t really covering it. At least at first.

The main interviews we are given are from his sister Beverly, and his roommate Simon Rodgers.

Simon is someone who shared a mutual interest with him in trains and they both seemed pretty cool dudes. So they decided to move in together. Simon always worried about Gary when he’d head out on his trips, because he wasn’t exactly ‘hiking’. He would go out on survivalist trips. Taking an absolute bare minimum of supplies. Relying on the wilderness to provide him with what he needed.

So Gary is a thrill seeker, who also enjoys building model trains. He’s incredibly smart, or as a news reporter tells us, extremely highly intelligent.

His sister never seemed to worry to much about him as he knew what he was doing, being a skilled outdoorsmen. He had a job working for a company that would make routes and maps for people looking to hunt and go on treks.

He also has experience hunting so. The guy should in most cases be alright on his own, and able to handle most situations. Until now obviously.

So what happened exactly?

Well the only person who had the most knowledge on the matter was Simon. He felt things were off, because of how Gary was acting the day he went out on his excursion. He told him to watch his doggo, he’d be gone a while and left. This was not his usual, as he loves his pupper, he’s the bestest boy and Gary doesn’t like being gone from them for long.

Simon is a bit sus. Mostly because he goes from worrying about his friend and roommate, worrying why he’d leave his dog for him to watch, and no one had a clue where he went because. He just never liked telling people. It was all part of his multi-day survival excursions.

Well Simon had to catch a flight after a few days, so he called Gary’s sister and told her ‘hey come get your bro’s dog, I gotta go.’, so knowing nothing about where the hell Gary is or went off too, when he was coming back. He had nothing to tell her when she came for the dog and just went on to his flight.

This puts Simon at the top of her list of people to push out the airlock.

This last trip also worried the hell out of his sister. Especially given his more recent outtings. She said he’d seemed different, scared. What’s more is that he was getting even more involved with survivalism and not just cutting down his supplies to the lowest possibly, but purposely going out to places with no phone coverage, no signs of life what so ever, and food is scarce.

If ever there was a scenario that just covered itself in a blanket of red flags, and screamed maybe you should call and spend more time with your bro bro. This might be it.

Especially given his trauma as a young kid.

As we learn from his sister, Gary and their parents went out camping one time when he was very young. His parents would go night fishing and leave a lantern out to light the way back to shore. Well one night while they were fishing, Gary decided to hunt frogs, so he took the lantern and moved it.

When his parents decided to bring the boat back in, well they crashed into the rocks and unfortunately died. Leaving Beverly to raise him as a teenager and take care of him the rest of their lives.

Sooo that also put some strain on their relationship. But it also brought them closer.

It’s an unfortunate series of events and all to scarily common. Where someone goes unchecked as they like, they go missing, and when the time comes that people ask ‘why didn’t you ask where they were going, this is your brother, this is your roommate, why weren’t you concerned.” Etc.

It just happens. We become creatures of habit, and we will always worry in the back of our minds for someone when they go out doing what they’ll do. And the one time they don’t come back. That’s when everyone beats themselves up for what they didn’t do, and should’ve done. But honestly just didn’t do because. You put trust in that person in what they’re doing, and hope they’ll be okay.

It’s pretty sad, and it’s a nice touch for the story in how they’re setting things up. We’re being given a lot of details about his vanishing, a quick glimpse at his life and how this all has effected those close to him. But not any of it is or has gone off into anything horrible, anything that points to a bigfoot, aliens etc. Nada.

It keeps things feeling real and it’s nice when these kind of films can really hit on that. They did their research and I give them kudos.

So after being missing for days, the police searched tried his phone by pinging it, ranger and park services went out looking, and all anyone was able to turn up. Was that they’d found his truck.

It gave them all hope that perhaps he could be okay, however once the police searched they discovered things were not that hopeful.

The truck was parked in an area far off from where he would’ve parked originally when he headed out. Things had been subtly messed with and most concerning, was that inside the truck they found dirt and barefoot marks. Not just barefoot marks, but deformed and cut barefoot marks.

So possibly Bigfoot. Or Dirtfoot at least.

WE CAN’T RULE IT OUT!!

So, when a missing persons truck is found parked oddly and off a beaten path, and you find dirty bare foot prints, which they did NOT rule out as being big. What else can you do but call in the Dog!

No they didn’t bring in Dog the Bounty Hunter, they instead employ a man introduced to us by firing off his gun into the desert, because fuck nature. His name is William “Bill” Salerno

He’s the man you call when people go missing and foul play is suspected, or Fowl play. It could be a Mothman creature too. We can’t rule that out.

Though Mothman can’t drive a car….but his cultist can!

So Bill had to be hired by Beverly first before they could discuss things. Things like whether or not he had enemies, if he was a redditor, if he regularly pwned people in fortnite and made lewd references to their parents. The normal stuff.

But Gary had no enemies, nor did he waste time online making enemies of fortnite players.

Just just liked being out in the forest, hanging with wild life, making videos and building his trains.

Simple guy that Gary.

As the days go on and nothing is turned up, Beverly is losing more and more sleep, she can’t help but focus on all of the worst scenarios. The only break they had in his case was the truck. But even that and the prints turned up nothing.

So Bill goes out to do what Bill does. Which is to check on whoever Beverly feels is the one to look out for. Mainly his roommate Simon. So after Billy boy kicks down the door and begins slapping him in the face with some summer sausage. Well it turned up nothing. He cleared Simon as he discovered the two had been fighting off and on and had considered moving out, but it never escalated to the point of violence. Just general disagreements.

Billy also uncovered through Gary’s pc that, he made an online friend whom he contacted a lot and became “more than friends” with. As it turns out, Gary was/is gay. This person did not want to be part of the documentary or care to talk at all. But Billy used his smoothest attempts to politely ask this person to help, by telling him if he doesn’t talk the cops will come find him and bust his ass down to the station for an interview. So the guy decided to talk and be as helpful as they could.

Though unfortunately it’s another dead end and simply more cheese on the burrito of Gary’s vanishing. This person admitted they had a relationship, but they knew nothing about where he went, they didn’t talk the day he headed out or anytime during. He was very upset and hurt hearing about his vanishing. But that’s all he knew.

Unfortunately searches can only go on for so long, and given the lack of evidence, and what they had been finding not exactly pointing to a good ending. The police eventually tell Beverly they must call off the search. It’s been long enough they should’ve turned up something, and unfortunately the reality is, if someone is out there, in an area with little to no food source and communication. It’d be a surprise if they survived more than a couple days. Sadly.

However, something does happen that was unexpected. It’s also a bit sad but revealing of the person you thought you knew.

Beverly starts getting calls and hearing all over the radio that Gary had a blog and that it had been blowing up online. Apparently Gary had over 50,000 viewers for his blog. Which, damn man, good on him. It’s a surprise to everyone and it’s nice in a way, because like what happens sadly when people pass in our lives, or go missing. Once we have to enter into their lives, their home. Often we discover a lot more about that person, and a new side of them we hadn’t seen begins to form.

It's awesome seeing he had that many people following his adventures, but it also could offer possible inside as to where he went if he told them, or if his followers had suggested spots. If they had tried looking themselves, etc.

It’s surprising knowing that none of his family or friends, even his roommate knew that he had a blog and that many followers. That many unknown people that really cared about them.

After a long while of going through his notifications, and alerts. Beverly finally uncovered something that proved helpful, but also mysterious. People were asking if he finally found “it”,

They examine his second to last video and uncover something disturbing, and unfortunately the best lead they have as to what could’ve happened to him.

Now because it’s a documentary for TV. They are being smart by not showing us his video. They are trying to both keep 'that’ intel off of television so others don’t try following his path, and they discuss how disturbing it was so, they decide not to air it.

What we discover is that Gary while out on one of his hikes late at night. Saw smoke and a fire in the distance. So he went to investigate, thinking there could be a wild fire. When he finds the site, he ends up discovering a lone cabin. Something he described as looking built by hand, like a homeless shack or something scrounged together.

Everyones expression turns grim as they recall watching the video and recalling what he saw, how it made him feel. He felt an impending sense of doom, he was overwhelmed with fear and he decided to run. He didn’t like being there or what he saw so he left. That night in his tent he slept with his shoes on incase he needed to run and get out of there.

However, the internet being the internet. As soon as he discovered this place, talked about it on his blog. He immediately had comments from followers asking him to go back and film it, to get pictures. Find out about it.

Which would seem a bit far fetched, I mean. Yeah. You tell people ‘this place made me feel I will die if I stay here’, so of course the internet says ‘well go back there’, so you do it without question.

Yeah it doesn’t fit. However here, they found a way to make it work and make sense. Enter, cyber bullying.

He didn’t like the idea, he didn’t want to be there, people were calling him a liar, saying the place was bullshit, he was just trying to get more views by going into some ghost story crap. So he decided in his last video posting, to tell people he is going back out there, he will record it to show people it exist, and prove to them all he is not a liar. He also will be going with his gun this time, because. Man isn’t stupid.

Only mildly stupid. For someone incredibly highly intelligent.

So now we have a much clearer picture as to what may have happened. His case may have escalated from a missing person, to a murder.

General rule of thumb in this world. Is if you happen to find a cabin, a house, a shack. Hunters shack. You leave it alone. If it looks like someone could be there? Leave it the fuck alone. Chances are, if someone is out there, in the middle of nowhere? They are there for a reason, and making friends is the furthest from that list of reasons. So if you wanna die, or end up skinned or put your butthole in jeopardy, go give that door a knock, and they’ll knock on yours.

TLDR: Stay the fuck away from weird houses in the woods. You’ll live longer, and happier.

It sure as hell beats the alternative.

Which we are going to now learn about.

The police contact Gary’s sister and have her come down to the station. Which is never usually a good thing, especially when they’d rather tell you why once you are there.

When she arrives she is told that a couple who were camping, had awoken that morning to find Gary’s backpack played on their shovel at their camp site. Someone during the night had walked to their camp site and purposely left it on display for them to find. That would also be the same person they believe who drove his truck away from its original spot so the search party and police wouldn’t find the original trail location.

Within the backpack were Gary’s belongings. His handheld camera, notebook, supplies, change of socks, his severed hand, clean underwear. The normal stuff.

Aside the severed hand. That’s not normal. I mean for most people. For most normal people.

So who’s hand was Gary carrying around in his pack?

OF COURSE IT’S HIS OWN DAMN HAND!! NO HE WASN’T COLLECTING RANDOM ASS PEOPLE HANDS AND BURYING THEM IN THE WOODS!

His hand had been detached, 5 weeks ago. The hand was still holding the camera he was recoding with. The hand was also cleanly severed. They discovered the memory chip was still thankfully in the camera, however there were no additional or identifiable fingerprints anywhere else.

Beverly couldn’t bring herself to watch the entire video that was recovered. However Bill sat through it beginning to end. Which is when the film shifts its final 18 minutes directly into what was recorded the night he went missing.

He wanted to keep himself as concealed as possible, so he used the infrared mode on his camera to help him get around. He also had his pistol with him and I would imagine it held a good few rounds.

I give major props to the filmmaker. They knew what they were doing, and they ended up putting out some of the downright creepiest shit. Not just in atmosphere, but the visuals, and audio. I’d almost dare you to watch this with headphones. The sound work on this is phenomenal and it really does add a real sense of being there in the dark, with that camera as your only source of light.

How someone can manage to make just video recording trees, the ground and total darkness beyond a few feet seem that menacing. It really fits. Especially with how Gary described the area making him feel. You really do get a sense that in the darkness, there is something watching back. Something aware. It really does carry a strong creeping sense of dread.

All of that without seeing anything…

Then we get the music.

I am at least calling it music. It’s very hard to make out. It’s like a very, old fashioned, trembling throat singing. Not monk stuff, but like. Basically backwoods early 20’s late 1910 type phonograph type sound and singing.

That alone is a huge what the living fuck, and something that should make you go, okay pack up and lets get the fuck outta here. The first time you hear this music, hell THIS sound. It’s entirely alien. To a point you almost expect a beam of light to pop over Gary and pull his ass up to the sky. Which I half expected. Like I thought he’d see a circle of lights in the sky and next thing he tries to run, a beam secures around him. His hand with the camera is outside the beam and cuts it clean off.

THAT popped in my mind as absolutely possible, and I would not had been surprised.

Shit even the possibility some bigfoots were having a party and stomping it out while grandpa foot cranks the victrola in the middle of the woods could’ve happened and I’d buy it.

The music just sounds less like music and more like a calling, a sound meant to signal ‘this is your one warning’, or worse something to lure you in. Like the forest mimics that can appear from a distance to be human and sound like they’re shouting for help. But immediately turn to attack when it catches your scent.

It’s well done creepiness and all again without ever having shown you something.

It only really gets you, when it finally does show you something, and that was a damn good setup for that something too.

He finally discovers the shack in the woods he saw many nights earlier and is finally recording. The music has started once again, and he’s looking over the place from the bushes. It’s hard to make out but it seems there might be a small fire once again inside. He hears a faint rustling not far from him and turns to glimpse it but finds nothing. He turns back to the house filming it once more, and with the camera. Being just the tiniest bit out of focus.

I really sincerely hope you bastards saw this movie before reading this, because I really think they did this setup well, and I’d often pictured something a bit like it for a horror film and how fucking great it’d look. They nailed it. So you again better had watched the damn thing.

But as he is recording the side of the shack. And the tall grass by its window. We suddenly see movement and realize that wasn’t all entirely tall grass. It was a figure, watching him and now taking a defensive posture.

So your damn right Gary takes off. Once he feels somewhat safe, and stops moving to hide himself. We finally get a clear look at this shape. Finding out it is sadly not Mothman or one of their cultist. It isn’t a Bigfoot or lovechild of Bigfoot. Nor is it an alien.

It is instead a very deformed man. Imagine if Sloth from The Goonies decided to get a day job as caretaker for a cabin in the woods and he never bathed or did laundry. That’s what you get.

I’d say mop boy Melvin otherwise known as the only super hero from Detroit, The Toxic Avenger. But Sloth is spot on for this man of the woods.

Absolutely this is a person who does not want to make friends. As they run out of nowhere toward Gary and slash at him with a machete.

They almost miss him. Instead hitting his leg and cutting it. Gary pulls out his pistol and the fight is on. The next time we see this man, he has returned with a torch, and is out stalking Gary. What happens between the two ends up being a game of cat and mouse. Only one person has an advantage here. One of them isn’t bleeding and scared for their life.

Gary begins firing off into the darkness. Any time he hears a grunt, a branch. Anything. He is popping off rounds. It looks like he could have struck the man, but we don’t know as they never directly make any kind of sound.

Eventually though, Gary runs out of ammunition. And of course that is when the man he was filming and silently trying to avoid. Rushes Gary and we get a semi out of focus look at the mans deformed face, as he cuts off Gary’s hand and the camera freezes.

And with that, Gary is presumed dead. Or at least in need of a helpful hand.

As the film comes to its end. Everyone is in shock over the end of Gary. The police and Billy presume that the man on film was someone who exiled themselves in the woods, because of their deformity. That they didn’t want to be found and saw Gary as a threat to that. That’s why they killed him, and its why they drove his truck far away from the site as to keep anyone from possibly finding them.

The film isn’t done with us yet though. No there is no last minute scare, no forgotten scene or additional scene. We have Beverly talking about getting a sense of closure now and trying to move on with her life. How her brothers death is a cautionary tale for others. A lesson from Billy Bounty Hunter about not fucking around with houses in the middle of the woods, unless you want to end up killed by a mutated man or eaten by a witch. And we get the closing text that, followers of Gary’s blog, a specific group, believe they may have found the site Gary had went too, or have an idea where it and the cabin are. They posted plans online to find this site, and expose it, to publish their findings in 2022.

And just by coincidence? Which had me very curious about how this film would end when I went to find it streaming, One of the top things to pop up when you google the title? Is part 2…

Which, they indeed did, and is going to be released soon.

So yeah, consider my ass there.

The End.

This was a fun ride. I wasn’t expecting what we ended up with, I mean it was likely to end up being something fun. I was expecting moonshine rednecks. But having a deformed person living in the woods hiding from the world. I like it. But I am curious their story.

Which for me is a good sign you did well with your film.

We are given zero on this person and it’s great. They look like they could’ve survived a nuclear waste spill. Could’ve been an abandoned child the family didn’t want, who can say. I like that they don’t try to even hint at it or guide your speculation. They just tell you they were hiding in the woods, that’s it.

Knowing there will be a sequel now. They might devote time to fleshing them out a bit more, or not at all, but I am curious to find out.

The acting by the sister and roommate were really well done. Especially Beverly. She really came off with a believable tone as the mourning sibling. I liked the actor for Gary, but some of their scenes did come off a bit on par with the actors ID channel uses for recreating crime scenes. Take that as you wish, but you might know what I mean by it.

If not well. Its someone not always selling the mood of the scene, but still looks believable.

For someone who saw something that ‘the longer he stared at it, the more it filled him with dread’ to be all smiles and chuckles about going out there to the house he felt was the greatest danger he had ever set eyes upon is...a choice.

I absolutely can buy that they were on something of a danger high by going out on survival trips further and further out in dangerous areas. When they started showing that he had discovered old graveyards and forgotten structures, It sold what he was doing for me. It’s something you could see a blog devoting itself too and getting views for during their outings. Finding strange abandoned structures and the like. One of his favorite spots was a very old graveyard he found while hiking off trail. That makes sense on why he’d go investigating the cabin, aside from the thought of a fire being out there and other campers as well. It also pushes the believability those people on his blog would be pushing for him to show it to them and investigate it.

Doing a documentary style found footage film is a good way to excuse why the filming, it’s also an interesting way to tell your story without having to really show too much. You let others fill the gaps for you and you don’t really get the whole story. Just the cliff notes, and then the wrap up. They would absolutely had never shown the last 18 minutes in a documentary, but it was a good transition in the film and gave us what it had been building up to since we began this journey.

This was another hour and twenty minute film and it didn’t really feel like it. It was fairly quick yes, but it didn’t skimp out on any details or key moments. We were told exactly what we needed and it moved along smoothly.

Hats off to the director and writer Dutch Marich. They’ve produced/written/directed a few different films, and a surprising number of found footage films. They found what works for their style of story telling and they definitely succeeded.

These movies don’t need to be outright gore filled or special effects laced films. It’s just gritty barebones, with a lot of detail and time spent on the parts that needed to look high production. There’s no gore, even when showing the severed hand there’s not, yet the film built a good tense of tension, fear and atmosphere. That freaking music is going to stay with my ass for days, and I still hate it and love it.

It's just weird enough that you can recall it in your head and how it goes. But you can’t nail down how it sounds. Then when you hear it again, just to hear how it sounds. It’s unsettling and you don’t need it.

Yes I’d use it as a ring tone, and It’d be like the time I thought it was funny using the throat noise from The Grudge as a ring tone, sure it was a fun idea. Until you get woke up in the middle of the night by your phone ringing on the dresser across from you and all you hear in the darkness is that throat noise.

Again, kudos to the director, and the main three cast membersl Suziey Block, Eric Mencis and David Morales.

This was a fun surprise, an enjoyable time, and I’m curious to check out more films from Dutch Marich.

There we are, another notch on the belt AND not a turd either. Maybe I can relax and except that maybe things are gonna be okay with the rest of these films. I mean I say that fully aware there is going to be a few of these that will make me cry and question why I dedicated a month to these, but I am going to embrace the goodness for the time being. Lets suck up all the goodness from these films we can until the shit storm begins.

As for now, I shall return tomorrow with our next film, and until then. If you see a naked hairy man in the woods, it’s not bigfoot, you just found a cruising spot, Also if you ever spot anyone naked in the woods period. Just run. You can look in curiosity, but then run, you will live longer. Unless it’s a deformed person living in the woods with a machete and cat like night vision. Then you are boned.