The Outwaters (2022)

The film opens with the sound of a panicked 9-1-1 call and visuals indicating that a group of friends named Robbie, Angela, Scott, and Michelle have been missing since 2017. A title card explains that the subsequent footage was recovered from three memory cards found in the Mojave Desert.

Robbie, an aspiring filmmaker in Los Angeles, recruits his brother Scott and his friend Angela to help film a music video for his friend Michelle in the Mojave. While getting ready for the expedition, he celebrates Scott's birthday, surprises their mother back home, parties with Angela, and talks to Michelle about her recently deceased mother. Footage of two separate earthquakes captured by Robbie from his apartment is also shown.

The four friends pack their equipment and begin their journey, spending the first night at a small lake. They continue deeper into the desert the next day and encounter a pack of donkeys blocking the road. They arrive at their final location, a small hillside area near a dried-up lakebed, and begin setting up camp. At night, the four are awakened by booming sounds and frantic animal noises that appear to be getting closer. Scott and Robbie leave their tent to investigate but find no clues. Robbie continues by himself and sees a strobing light along a hillside path.

The next day, the crew discuss the uncanny events of the previous evening and begin filming the video. During a break, Robbie and Michelle investigate the area where he saw the light and record high-pitched noises coming from a nearby hole, sensing something unusual beneath the earth. Robbie remarks that his camera battery has not gone down the entire time they've been there. Later, Robbie sees an axe at the top of a nearby hill. The crew head to the lakebed to finish filming the video, and the sound is overtaken by noises similar to the ones heard earlier in the hole. At night, the crew once again hear the booms and animal sounds. Robbie wanders off and sees a naked man on a hill wielding an axe. As he runs away, the man attacks Robbie off screen, giving him a head injury. Robbie returns to camp, bloody and disoriented, and finds Scott asleep but the women frantic.

The camera cuts to Robbie running through the desert as the two girls scream and plead for their lives. He encounters Scott and Angela, both soaked in blood. Robbie escapes and takes shelter in a small ravine until morning. He exits, naked and disoriented, and starts wandering the desert aimlessly. He finds that the area is now infested with screaming, fleshy, worm-like creatures. That night, he returns to the campsite to find the two tents covered in viscera and sees what appears to be Michelle's body. After a number of close calls with his assailant, Robbie is transported to a pool of red liquid by the light. He is taken back to the desert, vomits blood, and removes an unknown substance from his foot. He encounters the pack of donkeys, then sees himself and his three friends walking through the desert from when they first arrived. He sees a blood-soaked Michelle running across the lakebed and chases her. He encounters a bloodied Scott and Angela, acting normally, at the campsite. Exiting the tent, he finds himself at his mother's house and then on the wing of a plane, where he sees Scott through the window.

Back in the desert, in total darkness, Robbie runs into a large monster that closely inspects him and appears to be calling to similar creatures in the distance. He runs away and sees Angela back at camp, and the two are attacked by the worms. Robbie is carried by an unseen force that transports him back into the red liquid, and the camera is shown rapidly flying through a series of white lights before returning to the desert. Robbie finds a gas mask and an old sign indicating that he is in a government-restricted area and encounters his assailant, who appears to be his doppelgänger. The next day, Robbie finds the decomposing heads of his three companions impaled on pikes. He then finds the tooth of a large animal on the ground. He uses it to sever his penis and disembowel himself before reaching up towards the sun.