The world according to Bruno Dumont has no shortage of horror. But it wasn’t until Twentynine Palms that the French provocateur would craft what could essentially be labeled a horror film. As Dumont himself has said of the horror genre, “it’s not so much the subject that matters as the air itself. . . . In this way, Twentynine Palms is a horror film—an extreme horror, built up innocently, dependent on a delicate plot.” Indeed, the “plotting” of Twentynine Palms lies less in how it presents a narrative of events than in the way it navigates and delineates space. The film follows David (David Wissak), an American photographer, and his Russian lover Katia (Katia Golubeva) as they travel through the California desert. Their action shuttles (often wildly) between argument and fornication, walking and waiting, and only rarely is the audience offered a glimpse into their internal lives. All of this culminates in a series of violent acts, which subject the film’s characters, and potentially its viewers, to shocking levels of cruelty.