Getting lost in the desert is not something unfamiliar to Joshua Ekman’s debut feature film. His characters do come to the edge of some dangerous and violent things, but this so-called ‘neo-noir horror’ picture, in its final analysis, is fairly aimless and dull. “A Desert” tries to present a supernatural, spooky mystery in the style of Lynch’s “Lost Highway,” but in that case they simply did not have the dramatic tension and atmosphere needed for it to work. Still, its arty excursions into the backroads thriller genre are unlikely to be unsung given its premiere at the midnight section of the Tribeca Fest.
Later on, viewers learn that the film they’re trapped in feels like some sort of a purgatorial trap. Such an idea is interesting in itself but yet again, like numerous conceits in here, it’s never played out well enough to achieve a final form. Nevertheless, we begin this particular section, where we first see Kai Lennox as,” Alex Clark”, at the start of the film where he is exploring an empty dusty cinema in the Mojave. Aimed at a general audience, the plan is to use such vintage camera apparatus to capture vistas of dead space in order to relive the feelings that engulfed him with the launch of his collection of photographs entitled “Death of the New West,” around 20 years ago. Though it is a lonely trip, he rings his wife Samantha (Sarah Lind) in the evenings to report how things are going.
Soon, after settling in a Budget Inn close to Yucca Valley, she’s annoyed by quarrels in the neighboring room that take place every night and are accompanied by violent screams. After meeting the motel clerk (portrayed by Bill Brookston, who has never met a neat reptilian walk he didn’t want), he is awkwardly introduced to these other guests who are intimidating and come across as wife shirted Rennie (Zachary Ray Sherman with tatts), and underwear-clad Susie Q (Ashley B. Smith). While they professed to be brother and sister, what they passed off simply looked to be practice pimp and slot.
For what it’s worth, Alex is somehow persuaded to allow them to push their way into his room, and then order him to drink from a bottle.
The next day he finds himself all alone with a bad hangover and no recollection of the disgraceful act. On the contrary, his biggest disappointment comes later when he allows Rennie to take him to places that “no photographer has been to before.”
A week passes, and Sam is in a frenzy because she has not received any information regarding her husband apart from his incoherent voicemail. The cops aren’t particularly helpful, so she gets in touch with a private investigator named Harold Palladino (David Yow) to follow Alex. It does not take long before he is in the same motel, meeting the same shady people and visiting the same strange places: including a now-defunct military area with potential for unsavory shots. Eventually Sam, also makes an unconsidered choice to come over here.
In this film, Ekman whose first feature follows a number of successful shorts appears to elicit good performances from all the cast members. There is an even vividness in most of the frames such as in the cinematography of Jay Keitel which is rather very much influenced by the desert images taken by the stills of Alex whereas the score is attractive, diverse and understated by the Freedom Band of Ty Segal.
The slow burn narrative style works well in the first act but proves to be boring later on the moments the chaos begins, things happen in quick succession but the tempo still feels slow.
There is, moreover, not much suspense created, even when there are certain initially baffling images in the form of a bunker like studio from where illicit broadcasts seem to have come from that are later somewhat explained. Too many of the fateful late events seem to occur by an unlikely chance or coincidence. There is something of a feeling, unwinnable but all pervasive evil which the film wishes to convey, only that the style to do so is lacking. Eventually, the plot goes down the rabbit’s hole, and one is left feeling less like being caught in an alien and terrifying trap, instead irritated as to how it was a dumb dead end.
However, the alluring suggestion of some sordid, sprawling occult and/or criminal conspiracy might be sufficient for some viewers, who will be able to fit their own elaborate theories to the fadeout. “A Desert” has its own interesting oddities, and among them is the nip that fans of bad TV will relish, the nightmarish TV-clip Fritz gets is of James Landis’ 1963 cult film “The Sadist’, in which Arch Hall Jr depicted yet another juvenile psycho cruising Southern California back roads.
For more movies A Desert on 123Movies.