Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Joshua Erkman
Starring: David Yow, Kai Lennox, Sarah Lind, Zachary Ray Sherman, Ashley B. Smith
Psycho meets psychotronica in director Joshua Erkman's feature debut A Desert. Erkman's film owes much to Hitchcock's in its structure: something bad happens in a motel before the narrative shifts it focus to an investigating detective and later, a worried loved one. But stylistically A Desert is more reminiscent of the under-rated Anthony Perkins-directed sequel Psycho III, all sweat and throbbing neon signs, with a touch of surrealism for good measure.
Seeking to reinvigorate his ailing photography career, Alex (Kai Lennox) heads to California's remote Yucca Valley with a vintage camera of the sort that requires cumbersome 8x10 plates. He leaves his cellphone at home and travels without the aid of GPS. His hope is that he will find inspiration through getting lost. Alex takes exactly the sort of pictures you might expect of a shutterbug exploring the American SouthWest: abandoned military bases, run down motels and occasionally the odd wrinkled local. While staying at a motel he reluctantly invites a young white trash couple - Renny (Zachary Ray Sherman, clearly going for the Jeff Fahey look with his horseshoe mustache) and Suzie (Ashley B. Smith) - into his room.
The narrative later shifts to Alex's wife Sam (Sarah Lind) as she hires a sleazy private detective, Harold (David Yow), to track down her husband. Far from the buttoned up investigator played by Martin Balsam in Psycho, Harold is a sleazebag with a disgraced past, but he seems to know how to track down men who might not want to be found.
Erkman has set his debut in a recognisably real world, but like David Lynch and Nicolas Winding Refn, he skews his focus to an off-kilter angle. Characters speak in a purposely stilted manner that creates discomfort for those listening. In one of the creepiest moments we simply watch as someone counts to 24, and the sudden oddness of this act is deeply unsettling as we fear what might happen when the numbers run out. There are slightly surreal moments, talk of UFOs hovering in the night sky above the desert, and a recurring image of a man watching a wall of CRT TVs playing what might be snuff movies. The sudden bursts of extreme violence are straight out of the Lynch/Refn playbook.
The slightness of A Desert's plot may turn off those expecting a labyrinthine neo-noir, and there are few surprises - if it tastes like chicken here, it's probably chicken. But Erkman has created a debut that is brimming with unsettling atmosphere. He uses the iconography of the American SouthWest and our familiarity with the place as a setting for sweaty thrillers to keep us on edge. This is a corner of America abandoned by civilisation and progress, and filmmakers down the years have used it in the same threatening manner as their Australian cousins have deployed the Outback. If the heat and snakes don't get you, the people just might. A key motif here is that of an abandoned drive-in movie theatre, its giant screen still standing amid the weeds. Like that screen, Erkman's film is waiting for us to project our own anxieties onto its canvas, while providing more than a few of its own to get us started.
A Desert is on UK/ROI VOD from November 24th.
