Horror in the High Desert 4: Majesty - A Frustrating Experience

My review of the first three films in the series can be found here.

***

I'm officially frustrated.

The long-awaited fourth and penultimate film in the Horror in the High Desert series, Majesty, adds little to pique interest in the overall lore. Instead, it becomes more tangled, adding more characters and lore that muddy the water even more instead of clarifying it. I defended the first three movies with the caveat that the last two movies needed to pick up the pace.

Unfortunately, after Majesty, I don't have high hopes for the last film.

Majesty takes place on the Majesty Ranch in the high desert, near where Gary Hinge was last seen and where Minerva stayed. Oscar from Firewatch only gets a brief mention. Instead, we focus on the ranch itself, previously owned by patriarch Beau Hayden, who is locked in a land dispute with the Mantis mining company. The mining company uses intimidation tactics, or so Beau believes. However, the people he keeps seeing on his property may not be with the mining company, or people at all.

Beau has passed, so the story of the Majesty Ranch is told by his daughter Dolly, seen in Minerva and Firewatch. We also get our returning investigators, Gal Roberts and Bill Salerno. Beau had left behind a chest full of writings and video recordings documenting what he had seen. We see long, arduous shots of his footage, wildlife, and landscapes, which sometimes work to build tension but are starting to wear thin this far into the series.

Since Firewatch clarified and expanded elements from the first film, it's fair that this one expands on Minerva. I appreciated getting more background and an explanation to what the fuck happened to Minerva and the other victims introduced in her film, but the reveal was often unsatisfying or poorly explained. You almost have to take notes of every little detail that comes back around.

Majesty contains more scares, for those who like them, and there are some decent sequences that got me even after multiple viewings. An incredible scene involving a radio and a baby doll got me on so many levels.

However, the scary moments highlight how the pacing struggles. There are long shots Beau walking around, then the camera will show 0.3 seconds of something spooky before slamming you back to the documentary-style interviews. I had to replay one scene at least seven times before I caught what the hell was supposed to scare me. By the time I caught it, it was no longer scary. I get that they're trying to not give too much away, but if your synapses can't even register that something was there, it doesn't work. The footage sequences don't flow well, because there's little explanation in between to tie them together well.

Further, since this is supposed to be a mockumentary, the pacing doesn't correlate with how a typical documentary would run with this story. There would be a coherent analysis. They would trim the fat and only show the footage sequences that have some sort of merit.

For the last entry, writer/director Dutch Marich should retool the interview segments or integrating them more into the story. These segments hampered the flow of the film. As much as I love our consistent cast of characters, Dolly is the only one who had a personal connection to Beau, and yet she's underutilized. The interview segments add almost nothing to the story, and multiple characters state a certain sequence "is where everything changes" but then it's a weird scene that isn't explained at all. What changed? The hell am I looking at? They have investigators and family members, but they don't seem to know any more than we do or cannot explain it if they do. Not only is the vague lore not befitting of the documentary style, for a general film it's not an engaging experience.

Speaking of the cast, the voiceovers took me out of it. The main narrator is Dutch Marich, I believe, which is fine. But the person reading Beau's letters and journals is the same guy from Dracula Flow (NSFW), so it's impossible for me to take him seriously because I'm waiting for him to say "This shit ain't nothin' to me, man." The dialogue is clunkier and much more stilted than I remember in previous entries.

I think Marich wanted a character study for each film, but with Beau in particular, it doesn't feel like they gave us enough to go on. The other subjects felt at least like fleshed-out people, but Beau is more or less a guy who could quick-draw a giant 1980s camcorder like a Wild West sheriff. Beau also has no reaction to some of the wild shit happening, especially at the end. It's a bizarre choice, especially when we've seen characters in previous movies display fear or confusion, even from behind the camera. Even with the ending sequence that picks up, Beau seems only somewhat concerned before we get a bunch of sightings and a swift end.

I have to bring up the Hell House LLC series as a comparison for Horror in the High Desert. Hell House's recent entry suffered from pacing, tangled plotlines and poor dialogue as well. I think both series have overextended themselves, getting tripped up over their own lore. When you look back at HitHD1, the Gary Hinge story is much more coherent and has a clear plotline. After that, you get diminishing returns as Marich has struggled to maintain an engaging mystery over five movies. Because the lore is being stretched thin, each film gives so little away that it's just a slog.

It's frustrating that we have one more film that is supposed to lead us to a satisfying conclusion, and I don't see that happening. Majesty has some legitimately great sequences, but poor pacing and vagueness overshadow them. I wanted to be wowed by this one, but I'm just disappointed.