A Desert: The Wild Horror Film That’s Shocking the Tribeca Film Festival

MUST-SEE

Joshua Erkman’s directorial debut, A Desert, is a chilling cautionary tale about the dangers lurking in the vast wastelands of modern America. Premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, this film is a clash of the civilized and the primal, laced with a sly meta undercurrent about cinema’s relationship to the deviance it depicts.

A hauntingly beautiful desert landscape

Horror movies often serve as dire warnings about the world and its volatile, unholy chaos. A Desert is no exception, burrowing underneath your skin like a virus (or a curse). The film’s narrative focuses on Alex, a photographer traveling alone through the empty desert, forsaken ghost towns, and empty abodes of Yucca, Arizona. With an old 8x10 large-format film camera, Alex is striving to revitalize his photography career by snapping pictures of derelict places that, as he eventually articulates, represent “a moment where the unforgiving power of nature is gradually reclaiming its topography from what man has built on it.”

“I’m trying to purposely get lost.”

Alex’s goal is to recapture the magic of his own past, which had to do with photographs about the toll time takes on everything and everyone. A Desert suggests these connections with a dreaminess, courtesy of transitional fades and zooms into and out of close-up, that extends to the rest of the material’s subtle parallels.

An abandoned movie theater, a symbol of the unforgiving power of nature

As Alex drives aimlessly from one gone-to-seed locale after another, he begins to feel at home in barren places, where he believes he’s attained the “freedom” he seeks. However, such autonomy isn’t without its hazards, as he learns when, while staying at a rundown motel, he hears violent noises and yelling from the room next door.

Renny and Susie Q, the unsettling duo that changes Alex’s life forever

What follows is a descent into madness, as Alex becomes embroiled in a world of primal evil, where the lines between reality and nightmare are blurred. A Desert is a film that walks along the precipice of an abyss before ultimately diving in headfirst to see what dwells within.

A glimpse into the sinister world that lies beneath

With impressive 2001: A Space Odyssey-inspired flair, A Desert discovers both incomprehensible ghastliness and banal malice—both of which, it understands, are inextricable bedfellows.

A haunting finale witnessed on static-y, blood-splattered video monitors

A Desert is a must-see at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, a film that will burrow underneath your skin like a virus (or a curse). Don’t miss it.