A DESERT REVIEW
“Erkman has created such a unique genre film – dark and disturbing and truly quite original.”
I first saw Josh Erkman’s crime-thriller A Desert at the Tribeca Film Festival last year, and I can’t remember why I didn’t review it then, but it’s now been getting a slow roll-out release, and since I had a chance to watch it again, I decided to take some time to review it, since it’s such an original movie.
Kai Lennox plays L.A. photographer Alex Clark, who has been driving around the Mojave Desert looking for places to shoot with his old-timey camera. At a seedy motel, he encounters Zachary Ray Sherman’s Renny and his “sister” Susie Q (Ashley Smith), and they have a night of carousing that Alex doesn’t remember, before Renny convinces him to go out into the desert for what turns out to be nefarious purposes. Concerned about her husband’s absence, Alex’s wife Sam (Sarah Lind) hires the private detective Harold Palladino (David Yow) to look for her missing husband, and he too ends up encountering the seedier side of the area.
When I first watched Erkman’s film, and I saw David Yow’s name in the credits, I only really knew him from his band Jesus Lizard, who I actually hadn’t seen since the late ‘80s (opening for Nirvana at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, no less). As I watched the film, I assumed Yow was playing Renny, because his in-your-face personality was similar to what I remember of Yow from stage. It wasn’t until 45 minutes into the movie when Palladino is introduced that I realized that was actually Yow, quite unrecognizable by just wearing a suit and tie.
A Desert unfolds in such an unusual fashion, because Alex seems so unassuming. When he reports noises coming from the neighboring unit at the motel, you might presume it will lead to a confrontation to those loud neighbors, Renny and his sister. Instead, Alex is urged to use his camera to photograph them, one thing leads to another, and Alex isn’t sure exactly what he has gotten involved in.
Palladinoo’s introduction is not unlike the dramatic switch in Barbarian when Justin Long’s character shows up, even though by that point in A Desert, the viewer already knows what happened to Alex, even if his wife doesn’t realize yet. Palladino is a great character, a bit like a modern-day Raymond Chandler, and Yow’s performance is why the movie is able to work even with a switch in lead characters.
Erkman’s casting does wonders to really pull the viewer into this story, and the age-old cliché about location being a character is just as true with A Desert, that terrific Mojave setting being beautifully shot by cinematographer Jay Keitel, but it also has a darkness to it even during the portions of the film shot during the daytime. Adding to the overall creepiness of the whole thing is the score by Ty Segall
The film’s last act takes things into quite unexpected places, as we learn about some of the seedier aspects of Renny’s acquaintances, and Sam finds herself pulled into things after learning that Palladino has his own dark past, having been kicked off the police force for reasons we never learn. By that point, the detective has been drugged and robbed by Renny, who discovers Sam’s connection to Alex and pulls her into that world, creating tension for not knowing where things might end up.
Like a cross between Natural Born Killers and a modern-day noir thriller, Erkman has created such a unique genre film – dark and disturbing and truly quite original – that it’s worth seeking out.
Rating: 7.5/10
After a limited release on May 2 and playing a few theaters, A Desert will be expanding to many more locations on Friday, May 16, and you can find out if it’s playing near you and get tickets via the Official Site.