Where Silence Speaks Louder Than Words

Read Time:5 Minute, 14 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
A Desert
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Genre: Horror, Thriller
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 42m
Director(s): Joshua Erkman
Writer(s): Joshua Erkman, Bossi Baker
Cast: David Yow, Kai Lennox, Sarah Lind, Zachary Ray Sherman, Ashley B. Smith, Rob Zabrecky, S.A. Griffin
Where to Watch: Available in select theaters May 2, 2025

RAVING REVIEW: There’s a rare kind of movie that doesn’t just abandon the map but burns it before you even leave the driveway. A DESERT invites viewers into a world where structure crumbles, and meaning becomes something you have to piece together yourself. Joshua Erkman's feature debut doesn’t hide its intentions — it throws you into a stark American landscape and dares you to keep up as it disassembles every expectation along the way.

Alex Clark’s story starts deceptively simple. A photographer ventures into the fading corners of the Southwest, searching for the spark he once captured in his photobook, "Death of the New West." But what Alex hopes to preserve through his lens proves just as fragile as his sense of purpose. The deeper he goes, the more his journey begins to feel less like documentation and more like slow erasure.

Rather than walking a straight path, A DESERT deliberately steers into broken, uneven terrain. After a violent encounter at a worn-out motel, Alex crosses paths with Renny and Susie Q, two figures who seem less like people and more like echoes of the desert’s wild spirit. The story loosens its grip from there — characters fade without explanation, and threads trail off into the harsh, empty landscape. What could have been a suspenseful psychological drama unspools into a meditation on identity, displacement, and decay.

One of the most striking elements of A DESERT is its visual presence. Jay Keitel's cinematography turns the barren surroundings into something more, capturing every cracked surface and abandoned building with a detached kind of reverence. The reliance on analog gear — outdated cameras, static-blurred televisions — roots the film in a twilight zone between past and present, a reflection of Alex himself: caught somewhere he no longer belongs but unable to move forward.

The soundscape deserves just as much credit for shaping the atmosphere. Ty Segall’s score doesn’t simply accompany scenes; it infects them, a low, ever-present hum that gnaws at the edges of comfort. Without relying on genre clichés or obvious horror cues, Erkman manages to twist silence and sound into potent weapons of tension, allowing unease to settle slowly into the bones of the film.

However, the commitment to mood and abstraction sometimes comes at a cost. With Alex drifting in and out of focus, and supporting characters treated like fleeting apparitions, it becomes increasingly difficult to invest emotionally. The lack of a stable fixture leaves the viewer grasping for meaning as firmly as Alex clutches his fading ambitions. There’s a fine balance between immersive disorientation and narrative detachment, and A DESERT doesn’t always stay on the right side of that line.

Zachary Ray Sherman’s performance as Renny stands out, injecting the story with a volatile, unpredictable energy. Renny feels like he belongs to the desert itself — dangerous, captivating, and always one step away from disappearing. Yet even this strong performance struggles against the film’s constant shifting, never given enough room to develop into something lasting fully.

Susie Q, played by Ashley B. Smith, also feels like a missed opportunity. Introduced with intriguing hints of depth, her character is quickly sidelined. In a film so concerned with perspective and who gets to frame the story, it’s a noticeable absence not to explore her viewpoint further. Instead, she becomes another blurred figure in Alex’s increasingly hollow odyssey.

Perhaps one of A DESERT’s most resonant critiques comes from its handling of tourism — not just in the literal sense, but in the emotional and moral sense. Alex isn't merely photographing ruins; he’s consuming experiences, mining pain and decay for aesthetic value. Erkman subtly challenges viewers to consider their role as passive observers, complicit in reducing complex histories into digestible snapshots.

Still, there’s no denying that A DESERT leaves a mark. Erkman captures the strange beauty of decay — not through glossy visuals or forced symbolism, but through the slow, natural collapse of meaning and memory. It’s a portrait of dreams and identities corroding under a relentless sun, a haunting snapshot of a place and a mindset both slipping into oblivion.

In the end, A DESERT plays less like a conventional story and more like an old photograph you stumble across — haunting, half-forgotten, fraying at the edges. There’s frustration in its refusal to explain itself, but there’s also an undeniable resonance in the silences it leaves behind. It’s not a film designed for easy consumption, but for those willing to sit with its uncertainty, it lingers long after the screen goes dark.

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[photo courtesy of DARK SKY FILMS, YELLOW VEIL PICTURES]

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