Stumbling upon the 2024 horror movie "Desert Fiend" by random chance here in 2025, I believed I was in for a movie in the likes of "The Hills Have Eyes" or "Wrong Turn". I had never heard about the movie, but my love of all things horror made me give the movie a fair chance. I have to admit that I harbored no expectations to the movie, so director Shawn C. Phillips had every opportunity to entertain and impress me.
Writers Ethan Phillips and Shawn C. Phillips put together an oddly entertaining and enjoyable script and storyline. Sure, it was corny, campy and cheesy, but there was just something about the absurdity of it all that worked out nicely.
The character gallery in "Desert Fiends" certainly was something in its own league, and not just the cannibalistic people living in the desert.
I was rather surprised with the amount of familiar faces on the cast list, sure it was B-grade talents, but talents nonetheless. The movie had the likes of Bai Ling, Eric Roberts, Michael Paré, Scout Taylor-Compton, Tom Arnold, Robert LaSardo and Lisa Wilcox on the cast list, which was a surprise. The acting performances were rather over the top from the majority of the 'famous' of the cast crew, which gave the movie an oddly enjoyable cheesy feel. Michael Paré's insanely strange English accent was just laughably bad.
There was a surprising amount of blood and visceral mayhem in the movie. But for some odd reason, then writers Ethan Phillips and Shawn C. Phillips focused a lot of genital mutilations throughout the course of the scene. The effects in the movie were actually fair.
I found "Desert Fiends" to be an enjoyable movie. Why? Well, because it was so far out there, so bad and ridiculous that it actually crossed over a boundary and became a fun movie to watch. But I think it is a movie that requires you to have a fondness for off-beat movies, and thus this movie might not sit well with just everyone in the audience.
My rating of director Shawn C. Phillips's 2024 movie "Desert Fiends" lands on a six out of ten stars.
