“THE DESERT is strikingly original in the zombie genre…I was quietly blown away by the talent on display and the resonant themes of the movie.” – Ain’t it Cool News
“The Desert is beautiful, touching, moving, gripping and simply outstanding. You’ll fall in love with these characters and its simple set-up will keep you engaged right up until the end and for the next few weeks. The term “masterpiece” is bounded around a lot as a form of hyperbole, but The Desert is one of those films where the word is justified in its use. The Desert is a masterpiece.” – FlickeringMyth.com
A failed love triangle in a post-apocalyptic world.
Axel, Jonathan and Ana live together in a house that seems like a bunker in a post-catastrophic world. Outside is a threatening landscape, seen only as a background from the terrace of their house. Once they were a perfect love triangle, with strong bonds of friendship, but today nothing is left of it. Ana is with Jonathan and Axel is alone, bit by bit tattooing his body with flies. Their old relationship cannot be recovered, the wounds run too deep. To escape from this hell, Ana has invented “the therapy room”, a small room where they record their confessions on a video camera. Each one of them speaks to an imagined other and records it, though really Jonathan just sits alone in the room in silence to please Ana. Axel, on the other hand, only goes there to open a secret box that contains the tapes recorded by Ana.
But everything changes when Axel and Jonathan go out on an expedition in search of provisions and return to the house with a zombie that they call Pythagoras. The creature, with an expressionless face, stares out at nothing, at a fixed point in space, like a lobotomized patient. Pythagoras’ presence disturbs the others who begin to imagine an invisible presence in the room, exactly at the point where his gaze seems fixed. Perhaps that is why –or maybe it is because they need a cathartic element– they begin to beat him often, while he feels nothing of the torture, and the vicious circle of catharsis and guilt closes in more and more. Meanwhile Axel moves dangerously close to Ana, pushed on by Jonathan, as Ana gives into Axel’s desire in a desperate attempt to stop the free fall of their house.
