Reel Review: Delicate Arch (2024)

“Delicate Arch” is a unique, intoxicating mind trip that will make you question the nature of reality—after you question your sanity.

Delicate Arch begins with a seizure warning before transitioning to a chilling opening where a soothing female voice (Katie Self), highly reminiscent of Scarlett Johanson in Her, narrates an unfolding scene.

It’s unassuming at first but eerily foreboding.

“We emerge into a panorama from darkness in the Badlands of Central Utah. The desperate man enters. In a moment, he will fall.”

As the man falls to his knees, he cries out for help. Then things take a much darker turn as the narrator insists the man knows what to do. We watch in horror as he pours gasoline over his head, removes a lighter from his pocket, and sets himself on fire while the narrator dispassionately explains, “The desperate man burns.”

After the title screen, we meet our four central characters on a road trip to the desert to escape a severe inversion — an ecological disaster caused by climate change.

Grant (William Leon) is a film student capturing everything on an old Betamax camcorder. Wilda (Kelley Mack) is his recent ex-girlfriend. They are joined by their friend and environmentalist Cody (Kevin Bohleber) and Wilda’s free-spirited cousin Ferg (Rene Leech), who’s fascinated by metaphysical ideas about the nature of reality.

Along the way, Grant starts to see and sense things that increasingly concern him. In a pivotal scene, the narrator’s brief return signals something is very wrong.

During their first night in the desert, they tell ghost stories around the fire, and Grant jokingly (maybe) muses, “What if we’re actually in a horror movie?” They begin to hypothesize about what’s most likely to kill them: a horde of zombies, aliens, a Satanic biker cult.

There’s a fun wink at the audience at the film’s halfway mark, suggesting we’re in for a wild ride, and writer-director Matthew Warren more than delivers on that promise.

The back half of the film is absolutely unhinged.

Clever, continuously shifting filming techniques—ranging from a surreal, hallucinogenic drug trip to glitchy, distorted video to disturbing in-camera footage—repeatedly reinforce that reality is not what it seems.

Whether that means our characters are in a simulation, trapped on another plane, being toyed with for the sick amusement of some higher lifeform, à la Cabin in the Woods, or simply suffering from some psychotic break remains a mystery.

Is anything real? That’s as much a question for what happens onscreen as off.

It’s also the endlessly thought-provoking premise for this imaginative film, which takes its name from a world-famous 52-foot-tall natural sandstone arch in Utah. According to Grant, Native Americans thought the arches were portals to another time and space.

A haunting, relentlessly foreboding score helps ratchet up the tension.

When the visuals are unaffected by whatever mind-altering experience is at play (a drug trip, paranoia, the very fabric of time and space shifting), they are stunning. Sweeping panoramic landscapes shot in landscape ratio add natural beauty.

A desaturated color palette gives the film a vintage look, mirroring Grant’s obsession with analog film. It simultaneously gives everything a moody atmosphere—a sense of muted realism that contrasts gorgeously with the film’s more visually evocative scenes when strange things start happening.

Those seeking a rich and linear narrative may be frustrated. Delicate Arch is a film that is really ALL about the truly hypnotic visuals and the disorienting vibe.

But if you crave an immersive experience that is original, unexpected, and brimming with WTF weirdness that keeps you guessing at every turn, you’ll love every minute of this entrancing mind-trip.