'I tried to track down every location in the One Battle After Another car chase'

Joey set out to do something many fans attempted with varying success: locate the real world places used to film the extended car chase in One Battle After Another. The chase—edited together from multiple practical driving sequences and landscapes—was shot across a patchwork of Southern California locations near Borrego Springs and the Anza-Borrego desert.

Joey and his camera operator, Parker, drove out from Los Angeles to Borrego Springs to track down five of the most iconic frames from the sequence, and what they found mixes clear confirmations, near-misses, and one stubborn mystery that still needs solving.

Before the road trip began, Joey had a straightforward lead: a story in Variety quoting production designer Florencia Martin that much of the driving was filmed outside Borrego Springs near the Salton Sea. Locals and crew nicknamed parts of the area the "River of Hills" for the rolling, cinematic terrain used in multiple shots. Using Highway 78 as the primary axis, the team planned to follow the obvious hills and look for matching mountain ranges, road geometry, practical set pieces, and even the little details that give away a location—power lines, merge signs, park entrance signs, and skid marks.

The first target was the spot where a character referred to as Lockjaw is shot and his car apparently flies off a ridge. Joey drove in from the west on Highway 78 and found a wide open expanse that visually resembled the crash frame. From a distance the elevation and sightlines looked promising. But when comparing the mountain range and finer details, something did not line up.

Joey found corroborating behind-the-scenes footage from a local resident that showed the crew filming on a three lane road with a merge sign—an element not present along the stretches of Highway 78 he had driven. Because of that mismatch, he left the Lockjaw crash location as a "maybe"—likely a combination of two nearby places or a stretch that had been altered during filming. In short, visually similar terrain existed, but the road configuration in the verified BTS footage did not match the pieces Joey inspected.

Next on the list was the internet-famous still that many fans had circulated. Joey nicknamed it the Temple of Cinema because of its dramatic framing: a road carving between hills with a prominent power line running through the shot. That power line became the primary identifying clue, because higher voltage lines have a distinct scale and tower design that can be spotted from miles away.

After exhaustive driving—looping through Borrego Springs and back to Highway 78—Joey realized the specific power line towers in that viral frame were not anywhere obvious near the town. He checked a local road labeled "Texas Hills" on Google Maps, which was supposed to be the hilly, up-and-down stretch from the film, but that section did not match the dramatic hills from the movie. The trees, tower types, and skyline elements did not line up. The Temple of Cinema and the adjacent Rolling Hill shot proved elusive: similar features exist in the region, but the exact combination of hills and high-voltage towers remained hidden during Joey's visit.

One relatively clear lead came from fan research on Reddit: the cliff where a staged switch or "swap" kicks off part of the sequence was reportedly filmed at Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area, a vast open OHV (off-highway vehicle) park bordering the Anza-Borrego desert. The problem with Ocotillo Wells is its sheer size—the specific filming area might be miles from the visitor center and is composed of networks of dirt tracks that change with off-road activity.

Joey visited the state park visitor center and spoke with rangers. They were enthusiastic about their town being used in the production and were surprisingly helpful with on-the-ground information. The rangers confirmed that the car-off-cliff scene was filmed nearby and that some filming sites were indeed right around the corner from the station. However they also checked tree species and vegetation and noted that some other shots attributed to Borrego Springs might actually have been filmed elsewhere.

Armed with directions from the park staff, Joey drove to Hellhole Campground and launched a drone for aerial reconnaissance. From the air, a low ridge and a dip in the road matched one of the crash frames in the film. Behind-the-scenes footage from locals who had watched the shoot further confirmed that parts of the crash and reaction shots were filmed near Hellhole.

Interestingly, the footage suggested the production stitched multiple locations together in the edit. One probable pattern: the vehicle physically crashed in one spot, and then actors were filmed pulling up or reacting in another, but the edit blended the footage so seamlessly it reads as a single continuous geography on screen.

One of the clearest wins for the search came at a place Joey refers to as the Texas Dip. This section of road contains a pronounced crest and a descent that matches the final showdown sequence. The dip, surprisingly, does not look cinematic from a low street view, but when driving the road the vertical motion and sightlines create the intense feeling used in the movie.

At the top of the Texas Dip, two practical, on-the-ground props were still visible. First, the state park entrance sign near which a character hides is a real, practical sign—not a movie-only set piece. Joey initially expected the filmmakers brought in a mock sign for blocking, but the sign is a real entry marker and exists on both sides, which helped his confirmation. Second, there were actual skid marks on the road at the point where the cars would have collided. Those rubber traces and gouges in the dirt reinforced the idea that the final collision was filmed here with real vehicles and real impacts—not just second unit work or green-screen replacement.

With daylight running out, Joey tried one last approach using an old-school paper map the rangers had marked with several confirmed filming spots. One of those marked areas was Arroyo Salado, a remote wash behind the park. Ranger advice came with a clear warning: unless the crew had a heavy-duty off-road vehicle, the route would be treacherous and likely to trap a conventional car in deep sand churned by off-roaders.

Undeterred, Joey tried driving a short ways in. The first section looked manageable, but the sand quickly became soft and slippery, and the sun was dropping. Rather than risk getting stranded, the team turned back—after hitting a very large bump that underscored the rangers' caution. The retreat did not prove whether Arroyo Salado contained a specific film frame, but it did confirm the logistical constraints of reaching some filming areas without the proper vehicle or time window.

After a full day of driving, hiking, and drone work, Joey and his team came away with mixed results:

One of the key takeaways from the search is how editing choices and practical shooting strategies can turn multiple distinct places into a single, seamless on-screen geography. The filmmakers used multiple camera positions, real off-road tracks, and different vantage points to create the sense of a continuous chase. Actors reacted to staged events at one spot while stunt drivers delivered the physical crash elsewhere, and the edit stitched these together with matched sightlines and cutting rhythms.

That movie-magic approach is great for the audience but frustrating for location sleuths trying to reverse engineer what was shot where. In Joey's case, confirming geography required matching mountain ridgelines, road geometry, practical signage, and even skid marks; when any of those were missing, the identification had to be qualified rather than definitive.

Joey Daoud returned from the field with two solid confirmations, one likely match, one inaccessible site, and one unresolved mystery. The Borrego Springs area proved to be a rich tapestry of cinematic landscapes, but it also demonstrated how production teams blend several locations and practical elements to build a single, dramatic sequence.

If readers or local hunters recognize the Temple of Cinema or specific high-voltage towers matching that viral frame, Joey invited them to share coordinates or tips. With an off-road vehicle and daylight to spare, the remaining frames could be tracked down and fully documented.

For those curious about the behind-the-scenes workflow on the trip itself, Joey used a fast camera-to-cloud pipeline and Eddie AI, an AI-powered editing assistant, to speed up turnaround—details he plans to share separately for filmmakers interested in remote location workflows.

In short: the chase was mostly found, parts were left as clever edits or distant matches, and one very photogenic hill still has the internet guessing. The search continues.