The feature directorial debut from Joshua Erkman, who also co-wrote the film with Bossi Baker, A Desert is an intriguing blend of neo-noir, horror, and something that should appeal to fans of Rob Zombie (specifically his work showcasing the Firefly family).
Kai Lennox is Alex, a photographer who ends up staying at a motel where he encounters Renny (Zachary Ray Sherman) and Susie Q (Ashley Smith). Things don't go well, which leads to Alex's wife, Sam (Sarah Lind), hires a private investigator, Harold Palladino (David Yow), to retrace his steps and find him.
Interspersed with moments of surrealism, a nightmare atmosphere that keeps the firm with one foot planted in the horror genre while the rest of it stays firmly in thriller territory, A Desert may not be entirely successful with what it's trying to do, but that's only because it's never as focused as it could be. Characters are given some time and space, but still don't get enough. We get to know a bit about Alex, not much though. We get to find out the real faces behind the everyday (thin) masks worn by Renny and Susie Q, but only a glimpse. We feel Sam's worry and frustration in relation to the situation, but she is mostly defined just by that. The closest we get to someone fully fleshed-out is Harold, a mix of past failures and present weaknesses, but somehow still doing the job he was paid for when he gets away from any distractions.
The cast is a very mixed bag, which doesn't help. Sherman and Smith are so good that they show up those who can't match them, which is particularly obvious in the scenes they have with Lennox. Lind isn't given as much to do, although she does okay, and Yow is a bit too low-energy when the third act needs him to work in line with the heightened energy of things spiralling towards a climax. He's not bad though, just never seeming ready to act with any real haste.
For all the faults of the film, in terms of the varied performances, the scenes that seem to bulk out the 103-minute runtime unnecessarily, and the disappointingly vague nature of some key moments, it's a strong enough debut from Erkman to make him someone worth keeping an eye on. He shows a good ability to heighten the darkness and horror of what could have easily been a pedestrian and tame thriller premise, and there's something impressively Lynchian about the details he chooses to focus, as well as the atmosphere he creates in the moments that are building up to a sudden outburst of violence.
It's hard to recommend this to others, it is unlikely to fully satisfy thriller fans or horror fans, but it should definitely work for some people as it worked for me. And I'll be very interested in whatever comes next from Erkman, even if he uses this feature as a connection to some other tale in similar territory.
7/10
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