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 us to confront the reality of just how dark the world can be. However, outside of those moments, A Desert feels too derivative in its tone and opportunistic in its storytelling, especially the way it riffs on the plot structure of Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), but without a compelling and sympathetic monster.

The film’s first act follows Alex Clark (Kai Lennox), a middle-aged photographer who specializes in documenting abandoned buildings, decaying landscapes, and other forgotten corners of the desert southwest, through which he is taking a solo trip, looking for new subjects to photograph. The film opens inside of an abandoned movie theater, where he trains the lens of his antique 8 x 10 camera at a screen that hasn’t felt projected light in what appears to be decades. Although the script by Erkman and Bossi Baker never says anything explicit, there is a clear obsession in the film with the creation and consumption of images, not just via Alex’s large-format camera, but also a mysterious control room that houses long-outdated video monitors and cameras and a derelict drive-in theater that becomes the staging ground for a character’s psychedelic immersion in all the horrors that have transpired.

While staying at a roadside motel, Alex has the (un)fortunate experience of meeting his neighbors, a greasy-haired, handle-bar-mustachioed lothario named Renny (Zachary Ray Sherman) and his sultry “sister” Susie Q (Ashley B. Smith). Renny is creepy and charming at the same time, with his Southern drawl and the hint of psychosis in his eyes (I wouldn’t be surprised if Sherman watched and rewatched Brad Pitt’s performance as a serial killer in 1993’s Kalifornia). He isn’t the type who takes “no” for an answer, which is why he and Susie Q are able to ingratiate themselves into Alex’s world. The manner in which Renny is able to manipulate Alex is uncomfortably convincing, at least for a while, because the performances work so well; we believe in Renny’s pushiness and Alex’s malleability.

The second act switches the focus to Alex’s wife, Sam (Sarah Lind), who lives in Los Angeles and contacts private detective Harold Palladino (David Yow) when she hasn’t heard from Alex for a week and the police prove to be of no help. Harold, a disgraced former police detective whose view of humanity is cynical at best, follows Alex’s trail and winds up in the same locations, including the very motel room where Alex was staying, which naturally means his path is bound to cross with Renny and Susie Q’s. The coincidences start piling up—too high, one might say—especially once Sam decides to find out for herself how Randall is working the case. This is where the film either comes off the rails completely or reaches its logical endpoint in the depths of human depravity—or perhaps both. Erkman, who has primarily directed music videos and a few short films, is definitely willing to take us to some dark, dark recesses, and A Desert would have been more effective if the path weren’t so heavily reliant on coincidences and contrivances. Nevertheless, Jay Keitel’s cinematography is consistently impressive, as is the moody, evocative score by prolific indie-rock singer-songwriter-producer Ty Segall. The parts are all there, but A Desert never quite adds up to anything more than the sum of them. However, I am definitely intrigued to see what Erkman will come up with next.

Copyright © 2025 James Kendrick

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