Isolated terrain featuring looming rock formations and challenging stretches of desert contribute to the story's menacing elements.

| Aug 10, 2021

Although the film is narrowly focused, it is a tense and loud protest against an egregious and pervasive social ill.

| Feb 26, 2021

There's no story here, only a one-sided shoot-em-up as callous as a video game. Hollywood has always been cynical, but Desierto distinguishes itself by its indifference to the dilemma it depicts.

| Jun 8, 2020

Despite its total lack of nuance, Desierto is a pretty good little thriller. Give it a shot.

| Feb 13, 2020

Compelling performances come from both Gael Garcia Bernal and Jeffrey Dean Morgan with Morgan being the real stand-out here.

| Oct 31, 2019

A simple movie-experience, sometimes obvious, but that works. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Aug 20, 2019

A cautionary tale about hate.

| Aug 19, 2019

A powerful, timely exercise in stomach churning suspense.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 17, 2019

The surprising thing about Desierto is not that Cuaron has essentially made a slasher film on the U.S. border, it's that the average slasher film is more suspenseful than this.

| Original Score: 4.5/10 | May 29, 2019

Those expecting Desierto to subvert or experiment with the thriller genre will be disappointed - but if it's solid genre thrills you seek, you could do a lot worse.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 18, 2019

"Desierto" is thrilling, suspenseful, and carries a simple, but clear survival and humanistic story.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 22, 2018

A Trump-type fantasy of a psychotic who picks off Mexicans crossing the border.

| Original Score: B | Nov 12, 2017

Given that it wants to be a political commentary, we wish the film had dug deeper, but taken simply as a thriller, Cuarón has provided us with a visually impressive film ... that keeps us engrossed.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 6, 2017

Even though a social justice horror film in the pop culture landscape is a clever concept, the one we're given is poorly executed.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 5, 2017

Jonás Cuarón's Desierto has a certain abstract, conceptual power.

| Sep 28, 2017

You don't have to strain to detect a political edge to the story.

| May 28, 2017

Although the proposal is effective and assembled with style and a brutal beauty, it lacks a social or ethical intention. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jan 12, 2017

Desierto is a brutal, relentless and pared-back survival thriller bursting with primal energy.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 9, 2017

A narration and a spectacle of tension and action of efficiency reinforced by a certain distance. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jan 5, 2017

Desierto plays like a snuff film rather than a message movie, the camera never skipping the chance to show a killing in grisly detail.

| Original Score: D | Jan 2, 2017