Young newspaper reporter Randy Mulkey is determined to prove the existence of an obscure Indian legend. He trundles off to a mountain cave in search of a "living spirit" to tell him where to find Natas, the evil one of the desert mountains who imprisoned 100 souls back in the wild-west days.
On the way, he wanders into a ghost town populated by blackened, shuffling zombies in ten-gallon hats, and sees his face on a "wanted" poster. Before these chatty creatures can hang him, he escapes and runs smack into "109-year-old" Nino Cochise, the living spirit (who rides a white horse). Cochise gives him a wooden peace-symbol necklace as protection against the evil spirits, and says, "Beware the serpent" before vanishing in a puff of smoke.
Mulkey returns to Tucson, Arizona and alerts his girlfriend, a TV newswoman who has had it up to here with talk of Natas. They return to the ghost town with a camera crew and all hell breaks loose. One fellow is staked through the neck by a ghost, another is decapitated by a flying scythe, and a naked woman crawls into bed to find a decayed but lively, murderous zombie waiting for her.
Having endured these improprieties, Mulkey and his girlfriend head up the mountain and encounter Natas -- that's "Satan" spelled backwards -- a weird-looking bat-like beast that takes one look at the reporter and spikes him with a red, electrical force ray. No one's looking when Mulkey's girlfriend shines a mirror in Natas' face, which sends him back to the wherever. In a stupid ending, the ghost town vanishes and Mulkey's dead friends come back to life, unable to remember that they all died.
Overall, NATAS--THE REFLECTION mixes equal parts of the ridiculous and genuinely eerie. The net effect doesn't add up, but the early scenes in the ghost town and Natas' anti-climactic appearance make the rest of it tolerable. The 16mm photography is very dark.