Horror in the High Desert 4: Majesty review
Horror in the High Desert heads to the past to find a way forward.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Horror in the High Desert 4: Majesty
Directed by Dutch Marich
Written by Dutch Marich
Starring Laurie Felix Bass, Suziey Block, Dutch Marich, David Morales and John Davis Walker
Horror in the High Desert 4: Majesty Review
There’s something about this series. Actually, I identified what it was way back when I reviewed the first one. Its ability to combine found footage with documentary-like talking heads has proven to be a winning combination. I likened it to watching a missing episode of Unsolved Mysteries…only with found footage in place of re-enactments. Which is somehow even more effective than Unsolved Mysteries was. Now four movies deep with no end in sight, the Horror in the High Desert series has more than made its case as one of the best horror series going today.
The original Horror in the High Desert was about a man who went missing in a desert area with some pretty interesting lore behind it. The series has occasionally returned to drop more nuggets about his story…including retracing his steps in part 3. Mostly, however, the series has spent its time deepening that lore around the region. A lot of weird things happen here. People tend to turn up dead…or not turn up at all.
Horror in the High Desert 4: Majesty tells the backstory of the Majesty ranch…and the contents of a box found on the property. I know that doesn’t sound like the most exciting thing in the world…but you have to trust me on this. Everything about Horror in the High Desert 4: Majesty (as well as the first three films) makes the mundane feel important. It offers an engrossing mockumentary and intersperses it with effective found footage. In four reviews I can’t fully explain why this works to the level that it does…but writer/director Dutch Marich has cracked some kind of code. With Majesty…he finds a way to make it all even creepier.
You aren’t going to get a ton of variation on the formula in any specific installment of the series. Why mess with a formula that works. But Majesty ups the effectiveness of its found footage segments but taking the story, and the footage, into the past. The footage we’ve been seeing until this point is always from the recent past. Someone has disappeared…or found some weird things going on around them…and we watch the footage they shot. Horror in the High Desert 4: Majesty offers up footage from decades ago. It looks authentic. It sounds authentic. And feeling authentic is what makes the formula work so incredibly well.
Along with the returning investigators in charge of keeping us up to date on all stranger occurrences in the Nevada desert…Horror in the High Desert 4: Majesty brings us the talking head of Dolly Broadbent (Laurie Felix Bass). She’s the owner of the Majesty ranch…and her husband Gerald found a box. The storyline of the box was introduced in the last chapter of the series. Majesty repeats this tradition by opening up a discussion about a mining company that will serve as the basis for the upcoming fifth chapter. It also means some awesome found footage in a creepy cave system. So, bonus.
There’s a tie into Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva in here as well. A reminder that this entire series is as interconnected as possible. Everything we learn in each new entry takes place before, during or after something we already know. Sometimes on the same ground…sometimes right next door. In the case of Majesty…the events have mostly taken place before what we already know. That’s where the old footage comes in.
What makes this series work isn’t a well kept secret. It has a completely engrossing way of telling a story. Every new piece of information feels like you’re about to uncover something you’ve been dying to know. You rarely do. But it works anyway. Marich has mastered a way to trickle out nuggets of knowledge…wrapping you into caring about what it means and how it connects to everything the series has built. Then it inserts genuinely effective scenes of found footage. They’re effective because of the context the mockumentary provides them with. Majesty gives us the oldest footage yet. Adding an extra layer of creepiness to a series that remains consistently creepy.
Scare Value
Dutch Marich has cracked some kind of code with his Horror in the High Desert series. No one combines found footage and faux-documentary styles better than he is doing it. Continuously expanding lore keeps things moving in multiple directions…and the chosen format makes everything feel both real and like anything is possible. That rare combination returns in Horror in the High Desert 4: Majesty. Another strong chapter in a series that I hope has many installments to come.
3.5/5
Horror in the High Desert 4: Majesty Link
Rent/Buy on VOD from Amazon
