My quick rating - 5.6/10. A Desert is the sort of movie that quietly invites you along for the ride, then halfway through decides to grab the wheel and swerve violently into the murky realm of psychological horror. At its core, it follows a photographer on a soul-searching road trip who crosses paths with a reckless couple. A fateful meeting that spins his journey into a neo-noir nightmare of manipulation and eerie unpredictability.
Going in blind is probably the best way to experience this film. The first act plays out like an atmospheric indie travelogue, steeped in sun-scorched loneliness and cryptic conversations. There's a deliberate patience in how the plot unfolds, and you'll need to bring plenty of your own. The story doesn't so much progress as it meanders, dangling odd character moments and unsettling undercurrents until finally tipping over into darkness.
Once it does, though, it embraces the weird, sometimes to a fault. This isn't some grand surrealistic plunge into a Lynchian dream (despite its obvious aspirations). A minute-long hyper-edited strobe sequence that tries to sum up the entire film in a rapid-fire collage feels more like a film school experiment than meaningful art. At its most indulgent, it seems weird simply for the sake of being weird.
But even if the style occasionally outpaces the substance, there's still enough here to keep things interesting. The psychological horror elements cut deep, driven by the unsettling notion that ordinary people can harbor grotesque secrets. Zachary Ray Sherman steals the show as the unpredictable thief-turned-killer, a smirking powder keg of impulse and cruelty. The script wisely keeps his past murky, letting your imagination conjure up just how twisted his trail of chaos might be.
As for the story itself, it’s more of a skeleton than a fully fleshed-out narrative. The film drops vague hints about bigger machinations, perhaps to tease your curiosity or simply to keep the dreamlike ambiguity intact. I believe they were hinting at some connection to pornography. Whether that’s clever minimalism or just undercooked plotting is up for debate. It certainly doesn’t feel like the start of a franchise, so thankfully it avoids dangling sequel bait.
If you’re hoping for a straightforward slasher or something soaked in gore, you’ll be left stranded in the dust. A Desert is much more invested in human depravity and psychological unraveling, prying at what makes people tick or snap. In the end, it does offer something a little off the beaten path, even if the journey is uneven and at times frustratingly opaque.
So if you have the patience to wander through its meandering wasteland, you might appreciate the detour it takes into raw, unsettling territory. Just don’t expect it to hand you a map.
Only a few streamers to choose from right now, including Amazon.
https://jackmeat.com/a-desert-2025/
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