You won't be particularly surprised to discover that Joshua Erkman's feature debut A Desert takes place largely in a desert, although I don't think the title is referring primarily to its geological location. The desert of the title is more of a moral than a physical landscape, one in which the story's unfortunate protagonists find themselves utterly trapped'”bleak, dry, and devoid of life, writhing with the heat and dust of horror and perversity. 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 ... Read More