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A Desert Reviews
Some will love it, but for this viewer it was one of those misses where the film is neither good nor bad; it just is, and there is no greater cinematic sin than a bland film. Especially when it had potentially to be so much more.
Joshua Erkman's methodical thriller rewards audience investment with an accomplished assault on the senses.
A Desert subverts expectations. It doesn't follow any sort of playbook, but instead, it invents its own rules. Joshua Erkman leaves a searing mark on horror, indicating that he has plenty more to say. He just needs time to say it.
A DESERT is a horror thriller that evolved and surprised in ways I never anticipated. Sure, it’s slow-burn and character-driven for much of the runtime, but it never gets boring.
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.
For a movie that opens in an abandoned cinema and possesses a strong meta dimension throughout, it’s only fitting that A Desert proves so potent, its mood and meanings impossible to shake.
It’s perhaps not a very profound message, but the visual and editing styles are swoony and most bewitching.
A Desert is an eerie examination of America’s decay, in the landscape and the population, as a photographer seeking the truth accidentally comes upon a horrific truth that will do anything to prevent being revealed.
There is a Lynchian ambition to Erkman’s work, and A Desert comes close at times to reaching those strange pinnacles of surreal discomfort that force us to confront the reality of just how dark the world can be.
A strong debut movie with a strange, forbidden setting. A terrifying point of view by the director and a true horror tale.
Erkman has created such a unique genre film – dark and disturbing and truly quite original – that it’s worth seeking out.
A hypnotic, slow-burning plunge into the heart of isolation and obsession, blending neo-noir menace with Lynchian surrealism. It’s a bold meditation on decay—both external and internal—that lingers long after the credits roll.
Philosophical and ruminative, but also suddenly and viscerally violent: A Desert is entirely unforgiving, much like the desert itself. Erkman and co-writer Bossi Baker set familiar rhythms and then blow them apart… an immensely cinematic work.
A grimy neo-noir nightmare that has its roots in classic cinema. A real tug of war between subgenres, and a surprisingly unpredictable movie for what initially looks like a real straightforward road trip thriller.
The main purpose of A Desert seems to be not merely to scare, but to unnerve.
Slow-burn sun-drenched noir.
The unsettling isolation of A Desert is just one small part of this horror thriller's larger whole, which delivers a disquieting road trip narrative.
There’s only so much room for mystery in a movie whose surreal ambiguity only says so much.
Once the style settles in, we are left with a compelling but frustratingly ambiguous film.
The whole film seems haunted by something—some intangible quality of loneliness, despair, and desperation...