It would be hard to believe that “A Desert” is Joshua Erkman’s feature-length debut. The kind of masterful buildup the first act of his film manages to conjure up is no short of brilliant. Taking inspiration from Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” David Lynch’s “Lost Highway,” and Tobe Hooper’s “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” with an original visual language to accompany those subtle nods, Erkman’s slow-burn horror has a sense of mystery that keeps you engrossed. However, it also slides away so much from where it’s aiming that much of it gets diluted as the narrative progresses into anti-narrative territory.

It all begins with Alex Clark’s (Kai Lennox) off-road adventure. He is an old-time photographer whose weapon of choice is an antique camera—the ones we only see now in period films. We get little to no introduction to him. Still, his communication with wife Sam (Sarah Lind...