[Film Review] A Desert (2024)

Following his decades working in film preservation, Joshua Erkman stepped behind the camera in his 2024 directorial debut, A Desert – a viciously bleak exploration of fading optimism in the US, urban paranoia, and decay set in a nightmarish world that is almost too much to look at. Yet, you won’t be able to avert your eyes. A Desert follows photographer Alex (Kai Lennox) as he drives around California's Yucca Valley, capturing the arid landscape and desecrated buildings as part of his latest project, trying to recapture the magic and success of his previous book. While staying at a motel on his travels, he meets brother-and-sister duo Renny (Zachary Ray Sherman) and Susie Q (Ashley Smith), quickly being drawn into the chaotic underbelly of the local area, dragging his wife Sam (Sarah Lind) and shady private detective Harold (David Yow) into the tangled web.

From its opening scene set in an abandoned movie theatre, A Desert immediately sets the skin-crawling tone that steadily ramps up across its 100-minute runtime. Erkman has created something that at once feels entirely familiar and utterly unique, blending tropes from the horror and neo-noir genres that constantly battle for focus at every twist and turn. In turn helping to amp up the chaos of A Desert that spirals into a truly wild third act that feels soberingly relevant in today’s climate, despite its surrealism. Viscerally violent and thought-provoking at once, A Desert is a bold meditation on its central themes, with Erkman and co-writer Bossi Baker expertly encapsulating the dangers and fallout when isolation and obsession bubble over. Each scene is as picturesque as Alex’s photographs, both grimy and devastatingly beautiful, lingering long after the credits roll. 

What anchors A Desert are the stellar central performances, most notably from Sherman as the deranged and unpredictable Renny, who dominates every scene he swaggers through. Lennox is similarly captivating as Alex, whose incessant politeness and inability to rock the boat is painful for the audience to watch as he gets sucked into a situation that is so obviously dangerous from the off. The chemistry between Lind and Yow as Sam and Harold is as painful yet hypnotic as every other facet of A Desert, two polar opposite people thrown together in the worst of circumstances, and forced to navigate a world that will swallow them whole at the first wrong step.

A Desert is a superb feature debut from Erkman, as unforgiving as the desert it is set in with scenes that will be burned into the audience’s mind long after the credits roll. It takes familiar narrative tropes and conventional themes, tearing them apart to create something unique that is far from the standard road trip thriller you may expect from the first act. 

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