HORROR ON THE HIGH DESERT 3: FIREWATCH (2024)

New streaming on Amazon Prime from Luminol Entertainment!
Directed/Written by Dutch Marich.
Check out the trailer here!!

The story of the disappearance of hiking influencer Gary Hinge (Eric Mencis) created a flurry of interest, resulting in many an amateur sleuth venturing out into the High Desert of Nevada searching for answers. But influencer Oscar Mendoza (Marco Antonio Parra) believes he knows what happened to Hinge. Armed with his own camera, Oscar travels further into the desert than any have gone before to uncover the truth, but is he truly prepared for what the desert has in store for him?

Now, if you haven’t seen the first two installments of this series, I wholly recommend them as truly terrifying mockumentaries or as I call them, shockumentaries. Kissing cousins with the found footage subgenre, shockumentaries don’t adhere to the same criteria as found footage films. Shockumentaries are produced by a third party. They may contain footage found, but the film has been directed, processed, and produced by a filmmaker. The footage is being re-presented by the documentarian as real. But because it is established that another set of hands have been on the footage, it doesn’t shatter that suspension of disbelief I usually hope to achieve with genuine found footage films when music or edits show up.

If you didn’t already know that the HORROR IN THE HIGH DESERT films were fiction, some might even think that they were real true crime/missing person reports on might see on Netflix. Writer/Director Dutch Marich does a great job of making the viewer feel like what is playing out is as authentic as can be. While it is made to look like a documentary, he still presents the footage found as authentically as possible, though there are a few wonky edits and some music added to the footage too, but my usual found footage checklist just doesn’t apply to this type of film.

Is this newest installment any good? Well, I would categorize this one as the weakest of the three, unfortunately. First, a minor nitpick. Subtitling the film FIREWATCH is misleading. The name has to do with the forest fires that are out of control along the west coast. Oscar takes advantage of the fires to sneak into the high desert without park rangers noticing them, as they are busy with the fires. But aside from a few news clips about the fires, we really don’t see any of these infernos affecting the actual story. I get it. This is a low budget film and playing with fire is expensive and downright dangerous. But I think the film should have just called itself EDNA, as that’s the name of the location where Oscar ends up in the climax.

But the fact that the film doesn’t deliver the fire promised in the title is besides the point. HORROR IN THE HIGH DESERT 3: FIREWATCH simply isn’t as scary as previous entries. There are quite a few sequences where there might be some potential for scares, but for some reason, the tension is cut just before something scary happens. Oscar is investigating a strange sound, which sounds like three taps, coming from an old shed. There is a build to some kind of terrifying reveal, but then the film cuts to the next day. The climax involves a long descent through an underground tunnel, as Oscar creeps around the stony corridors, his light barely penetrating the darkness. But even though there are sounds coming from behind him, nothing ever comes of it. The same goes for the final moments in the area known as Edna, as Oscar investigates an abandoned building. This is where something finally happens, but it comes and goes so quickly, I had to rewind numerous times to understand just what I was seeing. And once I did, man, was the reveal a letdown and a half.

On top of all of that, unlike the pair of women in the second one and Gary in the first installment, Oscar is not that likable of a protagonist. He’s a cocky, middle-aged influencer who takes unnecessary risks, screws over his partner by stealing his car to go on this trip alone, and jokes about starting a big fire in the middle of an area that, according to the story, is suffering great damage from forest fires at the moment. The fact that he charges forward when things seem to be getting dangerous also feels unbelievable. Plus, during the climax, Oscar seems to know details about the “things” in the desert that there is no way he could know.

The previous HORROR IN THE HIGH DESERT entries had potent terror. The first had a wonderful slow build to a terrifying reveal while MINERVA had numerous full-on fright sequences. But FIREWATCH is this franchise’s first misstep. It fails to deliver someone to be invested in and the scares to put him through just don’t compare with the previous films. On top of that, it only nudges the story along in an infinitesimal way, reminiscent of the snail’s pacing that went on for far too long in the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY franchise. Three movies in, and there really has been no development as to what happened to Gary in the first film, let alone what the hell is going on out there in the desert. There’s already a fourth installment, entitled MAJESTY in the works. FIREWATCH didn’t work for me, but I’m hoping the next one gets its groove back.

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Music Written by Tim Heidecker
Music & Arrangement by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy https://youtu.be/PDySbxQgZMg
(I do not own this music)