Review: ‘A Desert’ sets flame to love, art, and existence

“A picture is worth a thousand words”—a phrase we’ve been hearing for more than a century. In Joshua Erkman’s feature film debut, A Desert, that idiom comes into sharp and brutal focus. Co-written with Bossi Baker, the film takes deep meaning in picture art and twists it into something dark, forbidden, and devastating. Living in the same spiritual realm as Hounds of Love, A Desert explores love in all its forms, from deranged exploitation to rekindling what once was. Erkman uses such raw, pure humanity as the basis for a much bigger conversation about what it means to love and be loved in a world that threatens the very foundation of existence.

Alex (Kai Lennox) wants desperately to recapture the feeling he experienced 20 years ago when he made the coffee table book that put him on the map. He heads across the American Southwest to rediscover his art and find the same beauty he uncovered all those years ago. During a stop at a cheap motel, he encounters a very strange couple, Renny (Zachary Ray Sherman) and Suzie Q (Ashley Smith), with a predilection for getting high and taking naughty pictures. On one black-out night, Alex finds himself tangled in their sticky, deadly web with no recollection of what may have happened in his booze-filled stupor.

Try as he might, Alex is unable to climb out of the dangerous hole and only tumbles further and further down into the underbelly of middle America. His wife (Sarah Lind) and a private detective (David Yow) get caught up in the undertow, thus becoming victims themselves of a cycle of violence perpetuated by an excess of greed and debauchery. Time is the only thing on their side, and it’s about to run out. Can they find their way out?

That’s the big question Erkman ponders in A Desert. We are all caught in a bear trap in some way. As we struggle and claw at the metal, the richest among us just look around and laugh. Baker and Erkman write a script that’s both heartfelt and unhinged. It’s rooted in a sick reality in which the worst kinds of people use, abuse, and discard resources (such as art) and suck the lives of others like parasites with an endless hunger. With cinematographer Jay Keitel, Erkman brings the world to life in a visual aesthetic akin to a Quentin Tarantino action/thriller.

A Desert subverts expectations. It doesn’t follow any sort of playbook, but instead, it invents its own rules. Joshua Erkman leaves a searing mark on horror, indicating that he has plenty more to say. He just needs time to say it.