Red Sands

Director Alex Turner’s follow-up to his impressive debut, 2004’s Dead Birds, Red Sands follows a group of American soldiers, including Shane West’s Jeff Keller, Leonard Roberts’ Marcus Howston, and Callum Blue’s Gregory Wilcox, as they’re confronted with an ancient evil while stranded in the middle of the Afghanistan desert. It’s a relatively promising set-up that’s generally employed to middling effect by Turner and screenwriter Simon Barrett, with the pair initially bogging the proceedings down with an almost painfully uneventful sensibility – as the film’s various characters essentially hunker down within a dilapidated stone house and wait for trouble to ensue. And while the above-average performances and atmospheric visuals prove effective at mildly sustaining the viewer’s interest, there inevitably reaches a point at which one can’t help but grow impatient for something of substance to occur. The increasingly prevalent emphasis on the protagonists’ horrific hallucinations certainly doesn’t help matters, as such interludes effectively infuse the proceedings with a been-there-done-that sort of vibe that ultimately proves oppressive – with the interchangeable nature of the movie’s various characters only exacerbating this feeling. The end result is an ambitious yet wholly underwhelming endeavor that might’ve benefited from a much more brief running time, admittedly, although Red Sands‘ inherently flawed (and downright tedious) premise likely would have spelled doom even for a brisk short film.

** out of ****