RED SANDS

Afghanistan, 2002. A platoon of American soldiers is sent to patrol a strategic road, but killing time is not easy and, between typical camaraderie jokes and thoughts turned towards girlfriends at home, there is also who decides to shoot at a religious effigy strangely hidden among the rocks. That same night, a woman is found wandering near the tent and from that moment strange events begin to occur that gradually lead to paranoia and mutual violence among the soldiers. War horror cases are very rare, perhaps because it is difficult to marry the horror of war with supernatural horror without heavily denaturing one or the other; these two film genres, moreover, are based on languages sometimes at opposite poles and therefore hardly assimilable. It is curious to note, for example, that to find an ancestor to this genre one has to go relatively close in time, to 1983, when a Michael Mann still in his early career directed "The Keep". In recent years there have been sporadic attempts at intergenre contamination between war films and horror films and works more or less successful such as "Below", "The Bunker", "Deathwatch – The Trench of Evil" have been born, all products that owe much to the Mannian prototype, both for the existentialist conception of the soldier and for the calm rhythms that accompany the narration. "Red Sands – The Occult Force", Alex Turner's second work after "Dead Birds – The Cursed House", does not differ from the standard. This follows the descent into an abyss of madness of a platoon of soldiers faced with real demons that metaphorically recall the absurdity of war and the reasons that push one to undertake it. Turner's intention is commendable and on his second attempt one can already glimpse an authorial imprint that makes the director of "Dead Birds" well recognizable; the two films, in fact, have really many points in common and, above all, both seek the combination of horror with other genres that have rarely been associated with it: here war, there western. But the Lovecraftian atmospheres and the functional calmness of the rhythm of "Dead Birds" are lost in "Red Sands" which, in the end, can be considered a mostly failed experiment. Turner tells us that death and damnation can come from a gesture as small as irresponsible, such as destroying a sacred effigy, and it is no coincidence that the war in which the protagonists are involved is precisely the current Middle Eastern dispute, where the ideological and cultural difference (and therefore religious) has always been very present and relevant. The manifestation of the demon through the appearance of a woman who is welcomed within the American group, trying to attack the integrity of the soldiers after having suffered sexual and moral violence from one of them, is certainly not coincidental and in this choice one can certainly glimpse the metaphor of the cultural mix and strategic social positioning that in recent times has led to events known in international news. The director, with the faithful screenwriter Simon Barrett, thus manages to carry forward a complex and interesting discourse but unfortunately fails precisely on the basic premise of entertainment that a film work should still guarantee, at least in part. "Red Sands" completely lacks rhythm, is repetitive, at times really heavy: in short, it is boring. The characters that populate the story do not have charisma, they seem to mimic the stereotypes of the military-recruit from cinematic blockbusters, between examples of camaraderie and frequent diatribes. After a first part completely built on the winks/clashes between the protagonists, the film becomes a sort of "The Thing" in the desert, but without the action and monstrous creatures of Carpenter's film. The characters do nothing but accuse each other, show signs of paranoia and constant emotional tension, until they kill each other or are killed by the demon. The demon, just another stumbling block of "Red Sands". With increasing frequency the Djinn, demon of Islamic mythology already protagonist of horror films such as "The Lamp", "Long Time Dead" and above all the "Wishmaster" saga, is invoked. Here the Djinn, or Genie, possesses the bodies and materializes in the sand or in monstrous and long-limbed forms; unfortunately, his presence remains constantly marginal and is never presented as a real physical threat to the protagonists, despite the fact that it is his malevolent presence that triggers all the dangerous situations. With great horror for the eyes of the viewer, then, Turner & co. had the bad idea of showing the viewer a Djinn horribly realized digitally, exploiting a CGI really incredible for 2009, of those that even ultra low budget films no longer have. "Red Sands" therefore appears as a work only partially successful, capable of moments of reflection and with good metaphorical potential, but unfortunately absolutely ineffective in the most purely cinematic aspect, appearing excessively flat and boring. Try again, Turner.