I couldn't stop thinking about sunscreen during the first two minutes of "Beyond the Reach." After 15 minutes I was trying to conjure up images of polar ice caps and northern lights. This is what happens when fragile people like me are overexposed to UV rays, even when they are cinematic. The sight of bone-dry water containers on film make me panic, so after a little flailing, all I wanted to do was crawl out of the theater to find the nearest drinks machine.

"Beyond the Reach" isn't exactly quality filmmaking but it does at least hammer home some good summer advice: Never leave home without a bottle of water and always slather yourself with sunscreen of at least SPF 50. Because you never know — you may find yourself stranded in the desert with nothing but a psychotic billionaire intent on watching you perish.

Set in the Mojave Desert in California, this movie makes frequent allusions to the location's unforgiving climate (even though most of it was actually filmed in Farmington, New Mexico). The temperature can reach 55 degrees Celsius, there's no shade in sight and, without water, a person could die in as little as 60 minutes. None of this is news to Ben (Jeremy Irvine), a desert guide who has lived in these parts most of his life and supposedly knows the Mojave like a favorite T-shirt. But he is compelled to explain it all to a rich hunter who rolls in from the city in a $500,000 customized SUV, equipped with espresso machine and martini blender. This is John Madec, a financier played with spot-on white-male entitlement by Michael Douglas — and as a man who gets whatever he wants, he is not impressed with the mundane. He shows Ben another toy: an Austrian rifle with a scope made to his exact specs. It's to hunt bighorn sheep, an endangered species — and Madec has already bribed the local sheriff so that he can do this.