When Horror in the High Desert was unceremoniously released on Tubi in 2021, writer/director Dutch Marich had no idea how popular it would soon become. His unassuming documentary-style found footage shocker left true crime aficionados baffled and found footage fans elated with its all-too-convincing story of an affable video blogger named Gary Hinge (played by Eric Mencis) who goes missing in the unforgiving Great Basin Desert region of Nevada.
A viral sensation amongst fright fans, Marich followed up that film with 2023’s Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva, which added some unexpected wrinkles and provocative questions to the series’ expanding mythos. Now, Horror in the High Desert 3: Firewatch will soon arrive to round out the trilogy.
Horror in the High Desert 3 plot details are scant (as is typical with the series), but the third installment picks up as a wildfire rages on the opposite side of the state. Oscar Mendoza (Marco Antonio Parra) takes advantage of the distraction to head to Northeastern Nevada on the trail of Gary Hinge’s last known whereabouts.
We caught up with Dutch Marich before the film’s Unnamed Footage Festival premiere to discuss the inspiration behind the series, his approach to getting independent horror movies made, and whether Firewatch might finally address the series’ lingering questions or raise countless new ones.
It’s been a long road to get Firewatch finished, can you tell us a bit about that journey?
It started over two years ago because after the first one came out, Firewatch was originally going to be part two, but a quarter of the way into filming it, I had to kind of pull the plug and come back to LA. My doctor told me not to do any lengthy traveling because of my back .
When you’re traveling, you’re sitting for hours at a time and he wanted me to avoid that. So I had the story for Minerva already kind of on the back burner, but when I realized there was a location right up the hill from me in the Angeles National Forest that I could spend forty-five minutes getting to and not nine hours, it changed things. And so all of the interiors of that trailer in Minerva were shot here in LA.
But for Firewatch, I had all this amazing footage. Most of it was B roll because I love to show the vastness of the desert. I was able to travel back there as often as I pleased to finish it, so it’s been a blast. It’s not the kind of production that does well with a schedule and a call sheet.
[Laughs] It’s whatever I feel like doing that day. And a lot of it involves non-actors, so it’s being patient and helping them get to where they need to be to make something great.
The series has become very popular on social media, but people may be surprised to learn that you were already a working director throughout the 2010s. Tell us a bit about your background and how you got started.
It’s funny to hear this because everyone thinks Horror in the High Desert is my first movie. It’s the first thing I’ve made that has blown up like this and developed an audience. I started as an actor, I moved to LA when I was seventeen to go to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, graduated, and did the acting thing for two years.
It wasn’t until I PA’d on a movie that I was like, “Holy shit. I can do this. I want to try this.” I wrote a script, raised money, and got my friends together. We went all the way out to where I film in Northern Nevada, and it was a disaster. I just had no idea what I was doing.
I was not prepared at all, but I thought I was until I got there. I consider it my film school because I learned so much about how to prepare, what not to do. Everyone else brought their A-game, all my friends and all the actors. But it’s something that will never see the light of day.
What was it called?
Bleed Out. It’s still on IMDb, I can’t get them to remove it. But I kind of want it to stay there because it is important to me, you know? After that, I kind of reeled it in and thought, “Okay, what can I make that I can take my time making and not be rushed and have time to perfect it?”
So, I used my sister, who is down here in LA. She was managing a restaurant, I was bartending, and we just arranged our two days off together every week. Over a couple of months, we shot this little horror thriller called Hunting.
It got into Shriekfest, and then it eventually went onto Amazon Prime video. From there, I just kept going, and each project got a little bigger and bigger until I made Horror in the High Desert during the pandemic which is ironically relatively small.
Was it a bigger project before COVID threw a wrench in things?
Oh yeah. The movies I had done right before this had a bigger budget, and I was taking professional actors there. One of them took place on a moving train. They were very much larger in scale, but Horror in the High Desert was maybe the most pared-back thing I’ve ever made because we shot it at the very height of the pandemic.
No two actors ever appear on screen together when you watch it, which a lot of people don’t notice until I point it out because we were abiding by all the guidelines.
When did you first notice that these films were getting popular? Was it as soon as the first one was released?
Not right off the bat. It was rejected by Prime video. They had a no-documentary policy during the pandemic because they were getting a ton of misinformation. They just put a blanket a “no independently produced documentaries” policy in place and they grouped this in with it because it’s so realistic.
It was a massive compliment, but I was crushed because I was very confident that there would be people out there that would connect with this. But it went to Tubi, and Tubi has a way bigger audience than I realized.
From there, it just kind of started snowballing. It got written up in all the horror blogs. A year went by, and Amazon changed their mind and took it. By the time it went live on Amazon, it had already developed this amazing fan base. It just shot up in Prime Video’s algorithm and took on a life of its own. It went into The New York Times, and NPR wrote about it. I mean, it’s just been wild.
How does it feel after spending 10 years in the trenches to finally have something catch fire like that?
It feels like a nice smoky Scotch. [Laughs] It was surreal. I mean, it’s still surreal because this movie came out so long ago and I feel like it’s more popular than ever now. It’s like the good old-fashioned word-of-mouth thing.
What was the inspiration behind Horror in the High Desert?
I love the show Disappeared on Investigation Discovery. There are a couple of episodes that just chill me to the bone. Those kind of shows and Dateline. Growing up in my house, my mom was the OG true crime lady, so it was inspired by a lot of different missing persons cases.
It seems found footage is one of the few subgenres of horror that people are always trying to claim is over and done with. What’s your relationship with food footage and what was the idea behind creating a found footage film in this horror climate?
I love found footage – it’s very different from a traditional fourth-wall movie. Yes, I can get scared from movies like The Conjuring, and The Strangers is one of my favorites, but it’s not the same kind of fear that I feel with found footage.
I loved The Blair Witch Project, it was one of the movies that got me into cinema. Not even just horror, but moviemaking in general. There was a period in my life when I went through an intense depression, and one of my biggest takeaways was my therapist ingraining in me to never lose a childlike sense of wonder because I felt like I had kind of lost interest in everything.
Once I regained that jovial, childlike sense of wonder, I shared that with people through found footage horror. There’s something about found footage when you know you can’t quite see something, but you can hear it. It’s wondrous but in a terrifying way.
To experience that from the comfort of your living room is one of the most amazing thrills for me. I find that I can, more often than not, achieve that feeling with found footage in a way that I can’t with other horror films.
The Horror in the High Desert films are impressive for fully embracing the idea that what we can’t see and what we imagine is scarier than anything that can be seen. Is that your mission statement for these films?
Really, what my goal is with these is to keep them – I don’t want to say as realistic as possible – but something that if you change the channel to it and start watching it, you would not know that you’re watching a horror film. To keep them pretty liminal.
In these movies, there are never going to be demons popping out of holes and Ouija boards lighting on fire. They’re just not that kind of movie. [Laughs] And I have a lot of naysayers going, “Nothing happens in this movie!” Those people are never going to like these movies. They won’t like Firewatch, they won’t like parts four, or five because they’re never going to be that type of movie.
How do you go about creating such overwhelming tension with so few elements?
Scaring myself. A lot of the tense scenes are just me by myself with a camera unless I need someone else there to be a character or something or move something or make a sound. Once I got the hang of it and got a grip on what worked and what didn’t and how to play the audience, setting them up for what they’re about to see with the found footage bits, it’s a blast.
Is it just you operating the camera for the whole shoot or do you have other folks?
It’s me, myself, and I. For Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva, I used an actual dashcam, I don’t know what it’s called, but it was like 150 bucks on Amazon. My iPhone, GoPros. My main camera when I’m shooting the interview stuff is the Sony A7S2.
I love Sony. I am very much self-taught. Like I said, Bleed Out was huge, but it was so damn dark you can’t even see what the hell’s going on. It was like a crash course in lighting.
YouTube is amazing when you’re learning. There are so many different channels to teach independent filmmaking. I’ve also done some online courses, but yeah, I’m definitely self-taught with cameras.
I love the performances of Eric Mencis and Tonya Williams Ogden in the first film, and I know you’ve worked mainly with non-professionals. Can you tell us a bit about casting?
Eric and Tonya are not professional actors. Eric is one of my favorite people on the planet, super charming and smart. I met him because he was the marketing and gift shop manager of the Nevada Northern Railway, which is my favorite place. It’s in Ely, Nevada, where I grew up.
His character is obsessed with trains because, in real life, he’s a train freak like me – he’s a rail nerd. During the train rides, he’s the one on the intercom like, “On your left are some poor cars that overturned in 1908. Coming up on your right…” So, he has somewhat of a performing background because a lot of people wouldn’t do that, they’d be shy.
He’s not afraid of trying new things and performing, and he just has an intensely lovable aura about him. He is kind of shy but not. When we were preparing for this movie, I realized he’d be the perfect person for Gary because he’s traveled all over the place, so he already had all these outdoor photos of him adventuring and being an outdoorsman.
He was not hard to direct at all. Everything we did with him was like one or two takes. If anything, we would have to redo it because he would get the giggles. [Laughs] So it was never an issue of, “I need you to do that again but like this.” He would just get the giggles because he wasn’t used to doing it.
Tonya, who plays Beverly, her role is a lot more emotionally rooted. She’s my cousin. And she also has no performing background but she’s creative. She’s a writer, she writes poetry, and she’s also an excellent storyteller.
I’d heard her tell these pretty intense stories of things that she’s either witnessed or seen at family get-togethers, so I knew she would be great for it because, in essence, that’s what these roles are: literal storytelling in the interview portions. So for her, it was just a matter of getting her where I needed her emotionally and then going from there.
Is train nerdery a Nevada thing? Is that something most people don’t know about Nevada?
I’m going to say yes because one of the most well-preserved, complete steam locomotive depots is in Ely, the Nevada Northern Railway. It is exactly how it was built in the early 1900s when the mining boom finally required a railroad.
It’s incredible. I filmed the movie Reaptown there which kind of showcases the whole railyard. We’re very big on trains in Nevada. Everyone here is very proud of it.
I grew up obsessed with them because the train turns around right near my house, so every time I would hear the whistle, no matter what I was doing, I would bail out of my house and ride my bike down and smash pennies.
Besides nostalgia, what draws you back to Nevada and makes it the ideal setting for these types of horror movies?
It is so remote. The town that my house is actually in is more of a village, it’s like 200 people. It’s up the canyon seven miles from downtown Ely, which is roughly 4,000 people. Everyone knows everyone and there’s not a whole lot to do.
I mean, there’s a lot to do outdoors, but it’s all outdoors. Growing up, I scared the shit out of myself! I cooked up stories and I always had this feeling like, “What else is out here?”
There’s so much space, it’s so vast when you can see for miles and miles and miles over these rolling hills. Yes, there’s wildlife out there, but what else is out there is kind of how I always felt. It’s just the space I find when I go there. I can think a lot more clearly and I just get ideas left and right.
It’s a sense of lost history, right? What’s underneath the hills.
Yeah, it’s perfect for horror because being high desert, as vast and wide open as it is, there’s also a lot of mountainous terrain, caves and lakes. So many places for things to hide.
I come from a lineage of miners, my dad was the mine manager, his dad, was the mine manager, and it still operates today. My sister works there. It’s the reason the town exists. The mining camp at the end of Minerva, that’s actually a late 1800s mining camp and you might see it in part three.
From the first film to Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva and now Firewatch, you’re constantly adding surprising wrinkles to the series mythology. Do you have an outline in mind for where everything is going, or is it more free-form?
Overall, it’s kind of difficult to answer because these installments are almost episodic and a lot of people want answers. I mean, I see it online, they’re like, “You gave us no answers!” Viewers may not get all the answers they want because, for me, part of the terror and the fear is not knowing.
It’s scary for a reason because you don’t know what the threat is. If you can’t see it, if you don’t know what it is, how are you going to fight it? How are you going to defend yourself against it?
In this world that I’m building, there’s a threat. We see it at the end of part one. Is it connected to what’s happening in part two? Yeah, I believe so, but I’m not going to spell it out for people in the movie with exposition.
In Firewatch, I think people will be a little whopped over the head with some stuff, but they may not be answers. There might be more questions, but as a viewer, I love that.
That’s what intrigues me with Disappeared. What the hell happened to these people? One of my favorite quotes is H.P. Lovecraft’s, “One of the oldest and greatest kinds of fear is the fear of the unknown.”
What is your relationship with social media? There seems to be a lot of commentary on social media and influencer culture in these films.
I am bad at it. [Laughs] It’s weird. When I was making part one and up until part one, I loved it, just because it’s a fun way to connect with your friends and kind of share what you’re doing. But then I never really felt the pressure of it until part one blew up, and people started coming after me for part two.
Some people were furious over part one. There’s a lot of people who feel duped because they do think it’s real until the end, and then they’re just pissed off, which is not my fault. I mean, you’re welcome!
But I also started to get all kinds of love from people. I’ve never been in a situation where I was getting tons of messages from strangers and I felt this responsibility to respond to all of them. It took me forever to realize that this is wonderful that they’re doing this, but I don’t have to respond to every single person.
As a filmmaker, you work so hard to finally develop an audience of people who love your work, but I felt a ton of pressure. I didn’t post anything for a while because even if I posted a picture of a burger that I was eating, I would get a slew of messages, “When is part two coming out? What the hell’s going on? Are you even doing it?” Which was flattering but also difficult. It’s hard for me to just ignore it, and I have finally come to a place where I realize it can be a blessing and a curse.
That same sentiment from part one is brought back in Firewatch because it is something I do like to talk about: the pressure you can feel online, from social media and online bullying.
It’s one thing if you have one or two people being nasty, but when you have hundreds of people dogpiling, coming after you, attacking your physical appearance, the way you speak.
You like to keep details close to the vest, but what can fans expect from Firewatch?
The ending is one of the scariest things I’ve ever made. I’m confident they can expect that. I think for most people, it’s going to be exactly what they want, with Oscar going out to find the cabin that Gary found and following in his footsteps.
It might not be presented the way they’re expecting, but I am incredibly excited to share the journey that this movie will take people on and where it ends up. I’m so excited to share the end of this trilogy with people.
How was this experience different from the past entries in the series?
It was a summer that I genuinely will never forget. Being out in the sagebrush, valleys, and mountains for all those sunrises and sunsets while doing what I love felt elevated.
We had one of the most terrifying experiences of my life during filming. I don’t think words would do it justice and I might end up using it as material for a future installment, so for now, I’ll keep it close at hand.
We also laughed so hard that we nearly threw up. It was everything I’d wanted a shoot to be. It was also the most challenging project I’ve ever done and the hardest I’ve ever worked on a movie.
Two locations in particular were not only spooky on their own, but the journey to reach them was downright treacherous and scary.
What would you say was your biggest struggle on this entry?
The biggest struggle was honestly filming some of these scenes without letting my fear get the best of me. Being able to stay relaxed and focus on directing and not just hurrying up and getting the scene over with and getting the hell out of there.
That and ticks! They were everywhere. We drenched ourselves and everything in peppermint oil. The biggest triumph was conquering my claustrophobia – long enough to get what I needed, anyway.
How do you feel that you’ve grown over these three movies?
I think I’ve gotten better at making people feel something. I’m grateful that the first movie has reached far and wide and found an audience for the rest of the series. It has allowed me to engage with a fan base of people who are into this storyline and world I’ve created, and that alone has afforded me so much bandwidth for growth.
I’ll always make the movies that I want to make and that I want to see, but now I get to listen to them and consider what works well and what doesn’t. I also feel like I’ve grown a lot in terms of being able to distinguish the difference between what an audience wants to consume and feel versus scenes or material that exist solely for my enjoyment as an artist.
There’s a fine line, and I feel like I’ve gotten a lot better at being conscious about that. At least, I hope I have.
How do you hope fans react to Firewatch?
I made this movie specifically for the OG fans of the first movie, so I think they’ll appreciate the way it circles back to Part 1 and Gary’s story. Fingers crossed.
With Part 2, I tried to keep in mind that people might start watching without having seen the first movie. In Part 3 there is a pretty solid revelation that links to Part 1 but you can still watch it without having seen the prior movies, it just won’t hit as hard.
Now with a trilogy in the rearview, what’s next for the Horror in the High Desert series?
This series has always been a dream of mine. A world and universe that is my creative playground for things that go bump in the night. Parts 4 and 5 have started pre-production but for now, I can’t say much about them. What I can say is that if you enjoy the series, there’s a lot more to come.
What is your advice for young horror filmmakers wanting to make something happen?
I’d tell them to make the movie they want to make that would scare them and use the resources and people they already have available to them and craft their story around that.
Do not get caught up in the machine of it all and wanting to have a full crew and trailers and all that kind of mirage that people think comes along with making a feature film.
You’re perfectly capable of making it yourself on your iPhone with your friends. It’s just you have to rely on the most important thing, which is your story, and if it’s something that scares you, it will most likely scare a lot of other people.
Horror in the High Desert: Firewatch hits VOD soon! In the meantime, you can watch Horror in the High Desert streaming for free on Tubi and Pluto TV. Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva is also streaming on Tubi, Prime Video, and Screambox.
For more found footage horror, check out our list of the scariest found footage horror movies.
