The real story begins long before you know it in Desert Road, a very smart, trippy chiller that plays with the conventions of survival horror and takes them in a wholly unexpected and, ultimately, really quite moving direction.
Making her directorial debut, Shannon Triplett shows a sophisticated grasp of genre dynamics, with a bold use of space — a stretch of the Mojave Desert doubling for Death Valley — that proves more and more gripping as the film’s mysteries unfold.
At which point, its boundaries begin to blur, slipping between horror and sci-fi in a way that recalls a hypnotic blend of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s The Endless and Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls.
The woman in question is Clare Devoir (Kristine Froseth), a 20-something photographer who is throwing in the towel after too many disappointments as a struggling artist in Los Angeles.
Read more on deadline.com