User reviews

I really enjoyed this director's last movie, Dead Birds, so I had high expectations for this one. Hollywood lives to disappoint though and Red Sands is a complete letdown.

The setting is intriguing, the situation (a released djinn) promising, but the director doesn't deliver. Like a wounded snake the film drags its slow length along to an utterly predictable ending. The action is sparse, the suspense even sparser. The actors try their damnedest to inject some energy into this thing but like a balloon with a puncture they can huff and puff for all their might but it won't inflate.

All in all a sorry show. Let's hope the director can learn by the mistakes made here for we know he's capable of a lot better. 4/10

Alex Turner, the director behind the small-scale demonic ghost feature 'Dead Birds', goes once again at the supernatural market (teaming up with 'Dead Birds' writer Sam Barrett), in his second feature with the based horror involving American soldiers encountering something otherworldly in the harsh, bone-dry deserts of Afghanistan (and has there been some Sci-fi presentations using that backdrop in the very terrible 'Monster Ark' and 'Manticore'). It throws up the usual plight that we see themed in these types of genre films in the last decade (Deathwatch, The Bunker and Outpost).

In-present day Afghanistan a small unit of American soldiers are positioned at an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere to control a strategic road that the Taliban are using. On their way there, they discover an ancient statue which one of the soldiers use for target practice. Unknowingly to them it unleashes a vengeful Djinn, who decides to take out its fury on them.

The main problem with Turner's 'Red Sands' is that it was all build-up, for nothing. Never did it consolidate any interest in the situation, and the characters are truly hard to care for. The basis is not as compelling as it could have been, because everything feels half-baked and inconsistent. From it's supernatural element to the mental breakdown of its characters in a foreign culture. This made the script poorly conceived, as not much depth is taken out and there's plenty of time to do so since is has the soldiers pretty much sitting around. Instead it wants to be vague, but this occasion there's nothing else going on to let that slide. It's not weird, creepy or relentless.

Not helping also is the plodding pace and repetitive nature of the actions with the lack of anything really threatening to construct an ounce of suspense, despite there always being a lurking menace (in the Taliban, Djinn or their own sanity's). The jolts when inserted don't have much effect, because of the close proximity (where they do come on later in the film). Disappointing in that aspect because the dusty local colour is atmospherically photographed and there's a genuine feel of place with its isolation and eerie shades. Some moments do create a dreamy, disorientating air and that's when the howling, uneasy music score awakens.

Turner's direction is polished in a visual sense, but while he keeps it tight, there's a real empty and lethargic style to it. The unhinged editing with its jaded dream sequences only grated. It's a real step down from 'Dead Birds', because there's nothing remotely creepy here. Sure it's going for psychological scars, where the friction between the soldiers becoming a tool for supernatural force, but the supposed tension feeding off that angle was dull and annoying. The characters are nothing more than your standard fodder. Shane West is the only recognizable face, and remains acceptable and Mercedes Masöhn has a hypnotic presence on screen. The special effects aren't so abundant, but when seen it's weak and clunky. The slipshod Djinn creation is very forgettable.

Unexciting, patchy and so-so execution.

well, being a horror movie buff, this movie was a great disappointment!! there was nothing that jumped out at me, from the comments made i decided to watch this movie and from the beginning it was boring and no plot!! i sat through this thinking it would get better but it just got worse!! it was slow, no action, or anything else as i continue to sit through it, my suggestion, don't waste your precious time on this ridiculous movie! i tried very hard to give this movie a chance and give it the benefit of the doubt, but honestly, watching as many movies as i have this one was so bad, i wish i could give it a better rating but i don't want to have someone like myself to waste there time and energy as trust me it was in fact one of the worst movies i have seen and i have seen some pretty bad ones, please don't waste your time!!!!!

Before seeing this movie, I expected something better from the director of 'Dead Birds' which was a very decent movie (not breath-taking, but interesting and worth-seeing in the horror genre). I got disappointed very early on, but I continued to watch it, maybe hoping for an interesting turn or at least something that would compensate me for the 90 minutes spent seeing it. But it kept on going worse. OK, the story setting is good, a group of American soldiers stationed in the Afghanistan's desert waking up a djinn. That's all that was good. It could be a nice movie but the result was boring, dull, not at least frightening, and the end is totally predictable. The actors were rather mediocre, the dialogs poor, the characters stereotypical, the special effects very cheap, the attempt to describe the American view of the Muslim religion childish and lacking, and the overall plot had a lot of holes in it. With one word, boring. A waste of time, there must be hundreds of other movies in this category better than this one so do not waste any time on this.

Decent actors, Passable Story, Effects are Mediocre at best. This movie pulled off a great Opening. Gets a bit unrealistic during the middle. Ending is sub-par. Direction was good. For a B-Budget movie this isn't that bad. It did get kind of slow at some scenes. The girl wasn't very scary. But you do get that creepy kind of feeling. The Music Soundtrack is Good. Has a cool vibe to it. The Sound Effects were dull and used.

The Thumbs up for this movie are, Interesting and Unique Story, Cool Music and Creepy moments.(no jumpers)

The Thumbs Down for this movie are, Dull Sound Effects, Not very Scary for a Thriller, Gets boring in the middle.

Its fresh on the market, but its mostly just another one of those Friday night movies to see with your buds.

The worst film I've seen in a long time. It's so bad I can't be bothered to write a lengthy review because I'm physically drained from the amount of boredom I've just been subjected to. You would get more enjoyment from watching a loaf of bread go stale.

The only reason I'm continuing to write is because of the reviewing guidelines on this website, you must write a minimum of 10 lines. What else can I say about Red Sands??? Well, chiefly there is no narrative, the main protagonist looks like an old blanket and the characters, i.e. the soldiers are too stereotypical to take seriously.

I'm actually thinking of prosecuting the filmmakers for the mental anguish I've just gone through. I'll need therapy to get over this travesty.

This movie is about a few soldiers alone in the desert who either kill each other or die mysteriously. The end.

This movie lacks the cause then effect that a horror movie needs in order to create tension and suspense. (and interest!) There is absolutely no connection between the incident with the statue and what follows in the movie. None. If you didn't read the press release, you'd never geddit.

The continuity of the movie is so bad you can snip it up and watch the scenes in any sequence. The story doesn't develop at all.

No new facts come to light as the movie progresses. At the end, we are in the same position as at the beginning, so it's kinda pointless that the director puts the last scene at the beginning.

There is no realization, no new understanding, no process of discovery. The only clues are provided by Shane West's dreams - and even then, they are sketchy anecdotes that fade too soon.

Mercedes Masohn's role could have been deleted from the movie without losing anything at all.

The deleted scenes on the DVD include a longer version of the Goat Herder scene that connects better to the rest of the movie.

Maybe I'm just too intelligent to be watching this genre?

I thought that it was a decent movie. i wish there were more army/horror films it makes a good genre. overall acting is decent and storyline was a little slow but not bad by any means. i have read bad reviews all over the net for this film ,but i enjoyed this movie . it has great visuals and atmosphere that keep your interest throughout. so as you can tell i think everyone should watch this and see . i joined IMDb just so i could comment on this because i was going to watch this then all the sites i belong to had negative comments on it so i never watched , but then i got bored and finally watched it and i was impressed.

When a US soldier uses an ancient stone idol as a target for shooting practise, he releases the evil djinn that was imprisoned within. As his platoon carry out orders to keep a desert road under surveillance, the malevolent spirit summons a sand storm and infiltrates the group in the form of an Afghan woman, and one by one the men fall victim to its power.

It might boast some impressive cinematography and a couple of fairly bloody effects, but with nary a decent scare during the whole film, a raft of stereotypical characters, dull dialogue, cheap-ass CGI effects, and an unexciting and uneventful plot that moves slower than a shifting dune, Red Sands is a dry and lifeless experience, just like the Afghanistani desert in which it is set.

As with his first horror flick Dead Birds, director Alex Turner takes the atmospheric, slow-burn, psychological route for much of the running time, his djinn using each victim's sins against them to terrify before killing; but whereas Dead Birds managed to deliver a modicum of atmosphere and a few effective frights between the less interesting bits, Red Sands manages neither and, given the choice, I'd rather count every grain of sand in Afghanistan than sit through this dreary film again.

I just watch this movie and i thought its not bad much underrated movie but worth watch.Its mixture of horror plus thriller sequences.If you are fan of military movies with ghostly touch then i think it is treat for you.Writer came with fresh and new idea direction is also good.I think actors do their job well. A military mission sent, to set base camp in the heart of desert went horribly wrong when a young girl visits them.I think you must give it try on Saturday night.If you are bore of b grade movies then just give it a try.Its not based on afghan or Iraq war like so many other movies in the market but a story with fresh and new idea.The cgi techniques are good it could be better but i think with the budget director have.he make worth of it and came with the movie which i must say not bad,like many other low budget b grade movies.If you are free on Saturday night then give it a try.

Red Sands is reminiscent of supernatural terrors like John Carpenter's The Thing. Without the big Hollywood bucks, this is skillful film-making with characters and setting doing the storytelling.

The abandoned war-torn stone house serves as an interesting choice of backdrop for a group of US soldiers sent to monitor a strategic Afghanistan road. What they encounter is more than they can handle...

While Alex Turner's cinematic action is superb, the only thing I find lacking is scale throughout the film. It just seemed too confining at times. A few grand establishing shots and culture elements would have given the film more depth and scale.

Definitely worth the ticket price.

In the Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, the Staff Sergeant Marcus Howston (Leonard Roberts) is assigned to stay temporary based in the desert nearby Kabul with six other soldiers guarding a road that they can not see from Al Qaeda. While patrolling the desert, they find a millenary temple with a stone carved idol; their translator Gregory Wilcox (Callum Blue) explains that worshippers come to that place to idolize Djinn, a race that have hatred for humans and was made by Allah from the smokeless flame in the beginning of the times in accordance with the Islam and pre-Islamic Arabian folklore. One racist soldier shots the statue that falls apart, unleashing a supernatural force. They camp in an abandoned house and during a sand storm, a Muslim woman (Mercedes Masöhn) comes out of the blue. Sooner they find that their truck was sabotaged and their communication broke down. The group stranded in the middle of nowhere gets mad and they are consumed by their sins and guilty.

"Red Sands" is a claustrophobic and tense psychological horror movie, with a great surrealistic story that can be interpreted as a madness process of a group of soldiers stranded in a place that they do not understand the culture and the language. There are many racist and stupid dialogs and situations, like when the sexist soldier shots an archaeological site, but what else could the viewer expect from invaders under stress? The distributor Sony of Brazil shows a total lake of respect with the Brazilian consumers, releasing a shameful DVD without subtitles in Portuguese. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Força Maligna" ("Malign Force")

I've seen the 2009 movie "Red Sands" once before, but must admit that I only remember the movie's title and the cover. I have entirely forgotten about the storyline, and thus I opted to revisit the movie here in 2024, as I had the opportunity to do so.

Writer Simon Barrett put together a watchable storyline, but it was hardly something outstanding or particularly memorable. And I guess that is why the movie is long gone from my memory, despite the fact of having seen it once or twice before. Now, the problem with the narrative in "Red Sands" is that nothing particularly interesting happens throughout the course of the movie, and before you know it and before anything interesting happens, the movie ends.

The movie didn't exactly have an abundance of familiar faces on the cast list, and that is actually something I do enjoy when I watch a movie. The only familiar faces on the screen, for me at least, were Shane West and Noel Gugliemi. Despite the fact that the narrative was a swing and a miss, the acting performances in "Red Sands" were fair enough.

Visually then you're not in for anything grand, so the movie didn't even have a display of impressive special effects to lift up the shortcomings of a boring and bland storyline.

If you enjoy horror movies, do yourself a favor and don't waste 89 minutes on watching "Red Sands". It just simply isn't worth the effort, as nothing actually happens throughout the course of the mundane storyline.

My rating of director Alex Turner's 2009 movie lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

Red Sands is a (cheap) remake of a French movie called Djinns. Both remind me of The R Point (without reaching it) : horror/psycho/thriller war movies

If you have not watched Djinns, then you will like Red Sands or find it OK (that's if you like this sort of horror/psycho/thriller war movies). It is tense, and the scenery makes it tense too. So if you like Red Sands, i strongly recommend you watch Djinns (taking place in the 60's during Algeria War)

But if you have watched Djinns fist (like me), you will be disappointed by Red Sands : it is too cheap, the plot is not as developed, not as tense as in Djinns, well in 3 words : not as good.

This film was a complete waste of time and probably the worst supposedly horror movie I have ever sat through, the whole idea was a complete nonsense from start to finish and I had to see it though just to see if it would make an impact on me at the end, well I was not disappointed, it was rubbish. The acting was bad, the story was bad, and in total the film was the worst I've seen in years. This will end up being in the top 100 list for bad movies of 2009. I wonder just how much was spent on this film ?? whatever it was it was wasted. The first thing that brought to my attention that this was gonna be a loser was the imagery of the helicopters that were obviously done by computers,e normally this is a good sign that a film was cheap, and believe me, it was. Don't waste your time and money.

I've seen this plot twice before. American troops in the Middle East unleash ancient monster trapped by some magic, monster proceeds to kill and maim. The two previous versions were Sci-Fi's "Manticore" and "Monster Ark". This one was a little better than those other two, but it's a leper with the most fingers honor- dubious to say the least.

I have to admit, this one is a little better than the other two. First, the actors were plausible as soldiers. They got the uniforms right, they got the equipment right, they got the procedures mostly right. (Some things they got wrong for dramatic effect, but it's forgivable.)

The film had a good budget, but followed the rule of not revealing your monster until the end of the film. Given the monster was rendered by some very poor CGI, that's probably for the best. The director instead substituted some atmospheric chills.

I'm probably giving this a better rating than it deserves, but that was only because it was so much better than those other two.

RED SANDS follows a group of soldiers stationed in the Iraqi desert, during their stay strange things begin to happen when a mysterious woman stumbles into their camp.

The film has a very slow pace, something one of my friends found extremely frustrating about this film, during the first act it seemed that the storyline was almost non existent up until the strange woman stumbles into the soldiers hideout, then after that the film started to build this very unsettling tension that has you thinking there's something out there but you just don't know what it is, and it also sets an unnerving mood with the soldiers slowly but surely beginning to lose it, the acting is good considering the minimal character development, the cast clearly didn't have much to work with but they pulled of a decent job.

Overall, a good movie if you're the patient kind, but I can say that a lot of people will find the slow pace rather frustrating, because most of the time it will feel like there's no storyline, but its there, like I said if you're the patient kind.

I was surprised to see the movie score only a 4.. but then I realized the majority of voters are probably young Americans (or Americans in general) who are too ignorant to understand foreign culture. Sadly, a nation that does not endorse free thinking and cultural knowledge robs it's people of many wonderful things in this World. The movie is actually quite disturbing but demands an alert mind (with longer attention span than 3 minutes) and even some knowledge about middle eastern countries and an insight into Islam. There are numerous Iranian truly magnificent horror movies covering the same topic as Red sands out there. This movie is creepy and lingers on in your mind. It is well made because it focuses on the characters and the story and does not try to cover up a poor script with expensive visual FX. Knowing how it ends does not stop me from watching it again as the overall feel and weirdness in the movie what makes it great.

Explosions, apparitions, lots of cuss words. They came at you over and over and over and over again. What a waste of time and money. Real red sand is more exciting. This is a major time-waster. Better spend your time snoozing, and this so-called movie will help you in that direction. The scenery? A whole lot of sand and a few dingy buildings. What did the movie makers have in mind? Who knows? Who cares? If you want to see action on sand take another look at "From Here To Eternity." "Red Sands." The title should be changed to dead sands. Special effects seemingly made by a junior high school group of film makers. In words of two --- forget it.

Apparently a remake of an Islamic horror film, RED SANDS turns out to be an entirely defunct horror yarn and indistinguishable from many, many others over the years. The idea of a squad of soldiers stumbling upon a nameless and ancient evil has been explored in everything from THE KEEP to OUTPOST to DEATHWATCH, along with R-POINT, THE GUARD POST and many Hollywood B-movies besides.

I don't mind familiar plots in films but they do have their work cut out in terms of delivering decent entertainment, i.e. making up for the lack of originality by offering good scripting and direction. RED SANDS doesn't. The writing is clichéd, the direction is sub-par and the movie resorts to cheesy CGI effects time and again.

I admire the efforts of the unknown cast (and it is really unknown when SPIDERMAN's J. K. Simmons is the only familiar face they could afford) but they're on a hiding to nothing with this film, where the paucity of imagination leaves it an entirely wishy-washy and sub-standard affair.