In Shannon Triplett’s new film Desert Road — which made its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film and TV Festival it is one of those films that you have to watch with a group of your friends. That way, when the film ends, you can each unpack what you just witnessed and have a dense discussion around the narrative of this wild rollercoaster of a movie.
The setting for Desert Road, is exactly where the title suggests — a desert road in the middle of nowhere. A nameless woman (Kristine Froseth) stops at a gas station in this abandoned part of town to fill up her vehicle with gas. As the gas station attendant (Max Mattern) helps her with her transaction he gives off “creepy guy vibes” and she gets back to her car to continue on with her journey. Triplett sets up this movie tonally to feel like there is a thriller element involved here with the peculiar clerk. However, what keeps you engaged in this story is the fact that following what happened to this is shrouded in mystery.
When the woman leaves the gas station she travels a short distance. Distracted by an incoming text message to her cell phone, she hits a boulder on the road which busts her tire. She also suffers from a head injury as a result of the impact. It’s not severe, and she’s able to recover and change her tire, however, she’s unable to to move the vehicle from the rock boulder which will require a tow. Forced to go back to the gas station and confront the creepy clerk that made her feel uncomfortable, she reluctantly asks for a number for a towing company. After contacting the towing company to set up a time to get her vehicle, she wanders around a bit in the desert and passes a factory. After passing that factory, she realizes that she has circled right back to where she left her vehicle.
Desert Road fuses a number of genres into its narrative. Part thriller, part mystery, part time-travel story and there’s even some elements of horror thrown in. Max Mattern gives an incredibly convincing performance as an ominous character. We as the audience don’t know if he has good or bad intentions which adds to not only the complexity of his character but the complexity of the plot itself. As the woman goes through this vicious cycle of circling back to find her car every time she’s trying to leave a different mile marker route, it becomes clear that something supernatural is happening here — but what exactly?
As her cell phone dies and she has no one to contact aside from the creepy clerk at the gas station, she quickly learns her options are running out. While she’s out on this desert road, we discover that one of her hobbies is photography. When the woman goes back to her car to look for her camera she discovers that it is missing which adds a larger conundrum to this enigmatic story. The woman encounters a homeless woman (Frances Fisher) who appears like a mirage in the desert at times. As the story cycles through this woman’s anxiety, paranoia and fear of what is happening to her, we also are wondering why she is encountering this experience? Did her head injury cause her to hallucinate? Is there some kind of alien presence causing this time shift? Who is this wandering homeless woman? And what is up with the weird gas station attendant?
As more of these questions are raised the plot thickens and story development gets more intense in Desert Road. As the plot slowly unveils what is happening, from one scene to the next we’re waiting with bated breath wondering about the fate of this woman’s journey. As she is being chased by outside forces including a security guard (D.B. Woodside) and the homeless woman shows up in her visions, this poor girl just doesn’t know what is reality and what isn’t. Desert Road is an ambitious, intriguing, and strong directorial debut by filmmaker Shannon Triplett who gives us pieces of a puzzle in a strategic way that doesn’t give away what is happening to the protagonist until the very end. And the ending is a great payoff.
Desert Road also stars: Beau Bridges, Ryan Hurst, Rachel Dratch and Edwin Garcia II.
Desert Road premiered at the 2024 SXSW TV & Film Festival.
