After Gary Hinge fails to return home from a backcountry hiking excursion, his sister reports him missing and authorities begin searching for him. Eventually, they discover his backpack at a campground, with his severed hand still gripping his camera. A pseudo-documentary, this independent film uses fictional talking heads and the found footage narrative technique made famous by The Blair Witch Project to evoke unbearable anticipation. The movie also explores social media influencers and their relationship with followers.
What Happened To Gary Hinge?
While the movie is a mockumentary, it feels very much like a found footage horror film. The low-budget production and inexperienced actors help sell the indie feel. It also features a slow burn approach to the story and basic editing, all of which adds to the tension and authenticity. Director Dutch Marich also used interviews and drone footage to make the movie feel real. This is a great way to create a sense of realism in a movie that’s meant to be shocking and unsettling.
Gary Hinge was a hiker and survivalist who documented his adventures on YouTube. He had a large following and often received threats from cyberbullies. In his last video before his disappearance, Gary talked about a cabin he had discovered on a previous hiking excursion. He claimed that it gave him a feeling of impending danger, and he advised his followers to stay away. When he failed to return home, his sister Beverly reported him missing. Authorities searched his truck, but were unable to find him. They did find a trail of barefoot footprints that didn’t match Gary’s. Months after his disappearance, Gary’s backpack was discovered at a campground. It contained a camcorder held by his severed hand. Campers had also spotted a cleanly severed finger. While Gary’s body was never recovered, his followers continued to speculate about what happened to him. Some believed he was abducted by aliens, while others thought he was murdered by a witch or an unknown predator.
The ending to the movie was shocking, and many viewers were left wondering what really happened to Gary Hinge. Some people have even compared the disappearance to that of YouTube influencer Kenny Veach, who went missing after exploring a cave in Nevada. Veach’s case is similar to Hinge’s in that he was a survivalist and adventurer who documented his experiences online.
The Story
The movie follows the disappearance of Gary Hinge, an amateur hiker who became famous for his videos that show him exploring remote wilderness. He disappeared after he was lured to the desert by a mysterious cabin that he claimed had a sinister presence. The film’s narrative is interspersed with interviews of his family, roommates, and a private investigator hired by Gary’s sister Beverly to find him. The police receive a missing person report from Gary after he doesn’t return home from his hiking excursion in the Great Basin Desert of Nevada. He had started the hike in the town of Ruth and was headed toward a cabin he’d visited on a previous expedition. When he doesn’t return within two days, his housemate Simon Rodgers alerts his sister Beverly and the police start searching for him.
After a while, Gary’s disappearance causes a backlash on his social media channels where people accuse him of fabricating his story. This prompts him to go back to the desert and find the cabin, despite his gut instinct telling him to stay away. While he is there, he is attacked by a deformed monstrous stranger who sever’s his arm. Horror in the High Desert is an effective mix of documentary and found footage, with long stretches of intimidating emptiness aiming to inspire a crippling sense of dread. It also features an impressive cast of actors, especially lead actor Eric Mencis. The film’s low budget is evident in the somewhat inexperienced acting and the occasional inconsequential typos, but it does a good job of selling the indie “documentary” vibe.
Unlike some movies that use the vlogger-fan dynamic to sell their scares, this one avoids sensationalism. The fact that the characters are all real helps to ground the film and make it more believable, but the ambiguous ending does take some of the sting out of the brutality of Gary’s death. It may be that he was killed by a supernatural spirit guarding the place, but it could have just as easily been a disfigured stranger who saw him as a threat that needed to be stopped.
The Plot
Gary Hinge was a man who loved the outdoors. He enjoyed hiking and building model trains. He even had a blog that he used to document his trips out into the wilderness. This blog was pretty popular and he had a lot of followers. But there was something about the way that he lived that was odd. He was always alone and he would go on survivalist adventures where he would take only the bare necessities. It was this kind of secluded lifestyle that may have contributed to his feelings of social rejection and isolation. During one of his hikes in the desert, Gary stumbled across an uncanny little cabin that gave him an impending sense of dread. He decided to share this find on his blog, but the reaction from his followers was overwhelmingly hostile. They were upset that he hadn’t documented the discovery in greater detail and demanded further proof.
The next time Gary went out into the desert, he took his camera with him. He hoped to film the cabin again in order to prove that his earlier claim was legitimate. However, he never returned and was reported missing by his sister. Authorities and his followers scoured the area, but Gary was nowhere to be found. A couple of weeks later, a camper found his severed hand in the middle of a desert trail.
This is the point at which the film starts to shift from a pseudo-documentary into a horror movie. Director Dutch Marich has a small, inexperienced cast and some basic editing that gives the film its “found footage” feel. The story is slow-burn, but the underlying tension is there for those willing to look for it. When Gary finally does return to the site where he saw the cabin, he finds it to be in a very precarious condition. He is able to take some video of the interior but is unable to explore it further because of the dangerous terrain. He does, however, notice that there is a human-like figure lurking nearby. The figure is moving slowly and it seems to be watching him closely.
The Conclusion
The film is a fairly slow-burning horror flick, with the majority of the movie’s running time consisting of talking head interviews that build up the mystery of what happened to Gary Hinge. But once the story has established its ominous, enigmatic angle, it swiftly plunges into horror and never looks back. The movie is undoubtedly a success in terms of its delivery, with the shaky camera work, burnt and blurry infrared footage, and creepy background sounds all contributing to the overall unnerving tone.
Gary Hinge’s disappearance was a major news story across the country, and he had a large following on his YouTube channel. This meant that his followers were eager to find out what had happened to him. While many of the details aren’t revealed in the movie, it is clear that there was some kind of sexual assault involved. However, it is unclear if this was a factor in Gary’s decision to leave the cabin or not. While the police were searching for Gary, social media influencers and explorers were simultaneously hunting down his location in the desert. They began making videos of their excursions, and this helped fuel the public’s interest in what had happened to him. The fact that the shack was located in a remote part of the desert also contributed to the fascination with it.
When Gary left the cabin, he was said to be feeling very isolated from his community and that he felt like a social outcast due to his homosexuality. He was supposedly frightened of being outed on his website, and that could have influenced his choice to leave the shack. Despite the extensive search by police, Gary was never found. His only surviving artefact was his mutilated, camera-clasp hand. While this doesn’t give any clues to his fate, it does suggest that something was very wrong at the cabin.
