‘A Desert’ Review: A Shocking Sun-Bleached Neo-Noir
The desert is a terrifying place for a horror movie. Think The Hills Have Eyes, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Horror In The High Desert, and even The Outwaters. It’s a stark, dry place full of secrets, as people hide in its deceptively vast landscape. For his feature film debut, aptly titled A Desert, writer and director Joshua Erkman delves into the secrets of the landscape through the lens (quite literally) of a photographer whose curiosity leads him down a violent path. Erkman’s story is shocking, harrowing, and sensorily overwhelming, a journey through sun-bleached hell into an incomprehensible world. With A Desert, Erkman crafts a surprising piece of cosmic horror, all about the random nature of violence and the existential unfairness inherent to human existence.
Alex (Kai Lennox) is a jaded photographer traveling around the American Southwest, his old stomping grounds from his earlier (and more successful) days as a professional photographer. Now a recovering alcoholic, he wanders the brightly lit landscape, searching for something among the cemeteries, motels, abandoned buildings, and strange townsfolk, something to bring him back to life.
Enter Renny (Zachary Ray Sherman) and Susie Q (Ashley Smith), supposed brother and sister who are staying in the room next to Alex. In obvious villainous fashion, they lead Alex down the road of temptation, and in the desert, Alex throws all restraint to the wind. Such indiscretion has ghastly consequences, and a sudden act of violence abruptly pushes A Desert into a detective story.
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The story then shifts from Alex to his wife, Sam (Sarah Lind), and Harold Palladino (David Yow), the private detective she hires to help find a now-missing Alex. As both go down their own respective rabbit holes, the desert seems to draw them in, like it drew in Alex, luring them in with a troubling but irresistible mystery of what lurks in the sun-bleached sands of the American Southwest.
A Desert is the definition of an atmospheric slow burn, but that’s far from a bad thing. Erkman knows how to pace a film, delivering information precisely when it’s necessary and not a second too soon. Every narrative beat is deliberate, which makes every shocking reveal all the more impactful as Erkman delights in punching his audience in the gut over and over again, painting a terrifying yet oddly enticing picture of life in and around such a barren landscape. It’s like Erkman found the desiccated corpse of the American Dream and filmed it from every ugly angle, exposing the rotten skeleton of our rapidly decaying country.
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Before Erkman was a filmmaker, he was a photographer, and his artistic eye is on grand display in A Desert. Working with cinematographer Jay Keitel, they capture the duality of the desert, a beautiful yet dangerous place brimming with possibilities. Unfortunately, at least in A Desert, those possibilities involve blood, death, and some rather unsavory characters armed with video cameras. Erkman and Keitel are unafraid of the bright, unrelenting sunlight and let it soak into each frame, creating a false sense of security. The filmmaking team perfectly utilizes the comfort of sunlight to craft a world that isn’t afraid of being seen. In fact, with those aforementioned video cameras and Alex’s own vintage camera, plus the meta-textual filming of the actual movie at hand, there’s a preoccupation here with capturing the world around you and exposing it (pun intended) to a larger population.
On top of Erkman’s narrative and the technical skills on display, the core cast is absolutely stunning as a group of troubled individuals trying to understand their reality in their own destructive ways. As Alex, Lennox is able to create a seemingly unassuming middle-aged man who’s uncomfortable in his own skin. His physicality tells a story of a man defeated, trying to find his place in the photography world again. But when he meets his new friends and alcohol is introduced back into the mix, something shifts, and his body changes as it feels like Lennox lets go of every clenched muscle in his body.
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It’s incredible character work, which only continues in Sherman’s performance as the absolutely vile Renny. While I’m sure Sherman is a wonderful person, his acting is almost too good, as his work here makes me terrified to confront him in even the brightest room. He screams, mutters, and scuttles through the frame, a feral figure who encapsulates the horrors of the desert, a cautionary tale made physical.
A Desert is one of the biggest surprises of 2025, at least for this writer. Erkman’s nasty neo-noir finds a way to bury itself into the soft folds of your brain and infect your every thought. There are no easy answers here, drying out under the oppressive desert heat. There are only questions and mind-shattering revelations that leave you stunned in your seat. Run, don’t walk, to a screening near you to experience one of the weirdest and most interesting movies of the year.
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A Desert
Summary
‘A Desert’ is like director Joshua Erkman found the desiccated corpse of the American Dream and filmed it from every ugly angle, exposing the rotten skeleton of our rapidly decaying country.
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