DESERT ROAD (2024)
Starring Kristine Froseth, Frances Fisher, Beau Bridges, Ryan Hurst, D.B. Woodside, Max Mattern, Edwin Garcia II and the voice of Rachel Dratch.
Screenplay by Shannon Triplett.
Directed by Shannon Triplett.
Distributed by Firebrand Media Group. 90 minutes. Not Rated.
Screened at the 2024 Philadelphia Film Festival.
Is it a horror film? Is it a ghost story? Is it a time-travel story? Is it a psychological examination?
Desert Road is all of the above at different points, and yet at the same time it is not really any of them.
The movie starts on a pretty standard thriller plotline. A woman is driving across country. Soon after stopping at a slightly creepy convenience store/gas station. Soon after leaving the store, she has an accident which blows out her tire and gets her car caught on a rock.
She goes back to the store and calls for a tow truck which never arrives. But is the number for the tow truck really the number of the local sheriff? And why, whenever she walks, no matter in which direction, does she end up back at her car?
It’s an intriguing setup, one that is alternately creepy and confounding (in a good way). What is going on here? Who is that mysterious old woman in the desert? What does the local factory have to do with everything? Is the counter guy at the gas station sketchy? Why does the tow truck driver/sheriff keep promising to come out but never seems to arrive?
Kristine Froseth does an excellent job of allowing the confusion and fear to ratchet up on her as the lead character – who is in most every scene – as she tries to figure out what kind of strange predicament that she has gotten herself into.
Towards the end the movie starts to lose the plot and not exactly make perfect sense, and yet it still has an intriguing, if slightly muddled, storyline.
If you are willing to give in to the surreal world of Desert Road and acknowledge what you are watching will not all make perfect sense, it weaves a pretty impressive quilt of dread over the audience.
Desert Road is the writing/directing debut by long-time Hollywood insider Shannon Triplett. (She had previously produced the 2014 version of Godzilla and worked on visual effects for the likes of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Battleship, I Am Number Four and others.)
Finally able to take on her own film, Desert Road shows her to be a very atmospheric filmmaker who has some pretty impressive potential. I’m looking forward to seeing what she does next.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 21, 2024.
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