Format: Internet video on Fire!
For whatever reason, there are movies that I get a little obsessed with when I can’t find them or struggle to locate a viewable version. Such a film is Dust Devil, and I’m not sure why. My guess, though, is that on first glance it looks like an American Western that is also a horror movie, some sort of supernatural creature plaguing settlers and gunslingers. There’s an appeal to me in that, and also a familiarity to the pen and paper RPG Deadlands, which is exactly that. Turns out Dust Devil not only takes place in modern times, it takes place in Namibia, not the American West.
Still, I finally found a viewable version of the film that has been a minor obsession of mine for a few years. Watching the equivalent of a YouTube video is always my last resort; traditional streaming or a physical copy are my preferred methods. Still, at some point, you have to go with what’s available. Dust Devil has never been streaming that I recall, I’ve never seen a physical copy of it, and it doesn’t exist in any of the libraries in my library system. If only I’d have known years ago—when I was a college student, I might have been able to get this through WorldCat.
We’re going to be given a new monster here, or at least a monster that most people are not going to find familiar. The dust devil of the title is essentially an anthropomorphic wind spirit. They take human form and go hunting for humans, typically those who are at the end of their lives in one way or another. Essentially, people who have nothing left to live for are the prey of the dust devils, which means loners, the suicidal, and those with nothing to lose. We’ll get a glimpse of this at the start when our title monster (Robert John Burke) kills a woman during sex.
With any film like this, we need a few other characters along with our creature. We need a primary victim, or at least the target of the creature’s hunt. This is going to be Wendy (Chelsea Field), a woman in an abusive marriage to Mark (Rufus Swart). Mark accuses her of cheating, so Wendy leaves, driving from South Africa to neighboring Namibia with Mark eventually in pursuit. We also need the hero. In this case, we get Sergeant Ben Mukurob (the great Zakes Mokae), who is sometimes assisted by his captain, Cornelius Beyman (the always-fun William Hootkins).
It won’t be long until Wendy encounters the Dust Devil and things start going poorly for her. Since Namibia is a lot of desert country, it’s a place where the dust devil is extremely powerful. Mukurob is going to get help as well, determining exactly what it is that he is chasing. This comes from John Matshikiza, who also doubles as the film’s narrator. As Wendy flees from her husband and the dust devil pursues her Mark and Ben follow both of them, dealing with the devil’s ability to conjure windstorms in pursuit of keeping Wendy safe.
Dust Devil is a slow burn. There are going to be moments when small secrets are revealed, like Wendy discovering exactly what it is that she is spending time with. There are some fun shock moments as well. Wendy picks up the devil as a hitchhiker who suddenly vanishes from her car at one point. It’s a cool moment and feels like an homage to Carnival of Souls.
It would be a stretch to call Dust Devil scary, though. There are a couple of important reasons for this. The first is that in a lot of ways, it’s not really trying to be that scary. This is a film that doesn’t really want to shock the audience that much. There are a few areas with some blood, but no real gore or body horror. This genuinely feels more about attempting to bring the audience to something much deeper—a sort of dread of what might be out there, a terror of the dark and unexplained things that might lurk in the less hospitable places of the world. As the audience, we’re not supposed to specifically be scared of the creature. We’re supposed to be unnerved by the possibility that something is out there, possibly hunting us, existing on those terrible margins of reality, in places where decay and negligence are the norm.
The other problem is the actual monster itself. Most of the time, the dust devil looks like a guy—Robert John Burke is a pretty generic good-looking actor. There’s a bit of Bryan Brown in him. There are moments of him showing his more monstrous side, though, and it really doesn’t come across well. It’s like the moment in Jeepers Creepers when we finally see the monster. Any tension built up is lost when we see the goofiness of the actual creature.
Dust Devil isn’t bad. The actual ending—not the final confrontation, but the denouement—works really well. It’s just that not everything that gets us there is as good as it should be.
Why to watch Dust Devil: It’s a film that shows desolation in a real way.
Why not to watch: The dust devil’s true form is disappointing.
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