Horror in the High Desert 2 - Minerva (2023)

Premise: A loosely (to put it midly) connected sequel to Horror in the High Desert, this is the story of the titular Minerva going to the High Desert to find Horror, I guess. Anyway so she goes to Midonowhere Town, then they find her but dead in bad circumstances, honestly. And there’s also another lady whose name I can’t remember that is a mom and honestly this is confusing BUT there’s some footage that was found and put together as a fake documentary so here we are.

Under 90 minutes? Yeah! Blissfully short, about 75 minutes long.
Do they say the title? Nah.

First thing I thought of:

Okay, more: The first movie had an afterthought of a plot, this one is basically a series of spooky scenes interconnected by some attempt at a narrative. At no point we are going to get any kind of answers, the documentary format barely makes any sense considering there’s nothing happening in terms of an investigation other than a couple of interviews… And at the same time boy were those some really tense scenes, specially that one with the dude walking in pitch black darkness (but you, the viewer, can still see stuff thanks to the camera’s night vision). I think in this case the runtime really works because if it was a bit longer than this i would have been annoyed, but at “barely a bit over an hour” it’s kind of an okay watch if you like the genre, I guess? Whoa another thoughtful, informative review by the Impeccable-Taste HQ!!!

A simple way to improve it: Number stations, old timey recordings and drone music are by definition really unsettling so I say more of that, all the time, and even more of the (tasteful) “did i see something in the background of that shot?” thing.

Trivia about the IMDb trivia Letterboxd reviews:

It REALLY is a land of contrasts.