A Desert (dir. Joshua Erkman)

By: Adam Freed

A photographer named Alex Clark goes on a pilgrimage to the desolate American Southwest looking for the isolationist inspiration that prompted the publication of his first book twenty years earlier.  Clark, played affably by Kai Lennox (Green Room), is drawn to decaying evidence of the desert reclaiming what humanity placed in its path countless years before. Clark is a loner, which in the world of Joshua Erkman’s diabolically thrilling A Desert, places the single minded photographer in the nefarious path of desert dwelling miscreant couple Renny and Susie Q.  As a native of the inhospitable land, Renny proves to be a predatory opportunist in search of his next mark, a proposition that the wandering photographer makes all too convenient.  The spiraling chain of events that follows is simply too good to miss and impossible to forget.

In A Desert, Joshua Erkman captures the withered beauty of the film’s isolated setting and layers it with memorable antagonistic characters adept at surviving in such a place.  Renny is captured with scene stealing delight by Zachary Ray Sherman (Lost in Tomorrow), who fills the character with a manic unpredictability that lends a form of gravity to his film defining performance.  Alongside Renny is the perfectly cast Ashley B. Smith (Off Ramp) who through Susie Q, captures the wounded survivalist instinct of Renny’s running mate.  Her character feels far more rooted to the circumstances of reality yet carries a penchant for dismissing morality in favor of meeting her hierarchy of needs. Refreshingly, Erkman leans into the horrific elements of A Desert, rather than trying to deny them, and the result is a genre mashing horror/thriller that is without hesitation one of the year’s more provocative and exhilarating filmgoing experiences.   

Target Score 9/10 Joshua Erkman’s A Desert is a genre bending revelation of a neo-noir thriller.  While capturing the rugged beauty of the film’s desolate landscape, the dark and brooding story invites audiences into an unimaginable world of predatory survivalist instinct. 

A Desert was screened in conjunction with Movie Archer’s coverage of the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival.