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Red Sands is the second collaboration between writer Simon Barrett and Director Alex Turner. Their previous movie, Dead Birds was a creepy, gory, atmospheric civil war set horror movie. And although it doesn’t contain enough dead birds to warrant the pluralization of the title, Dead Birds is definitely worth a look.

Coming as a second part in what is said to be a narratively unrelated, but thematically similar planned trilogy (à la Chan-Wook Park’s Vengeance trilogy) this movie is a worthy sophomore effort.

This time, the war that forms the backdrop to the movie is the current Afghanistan conflict. Of course, that doesn’t really matter as, again, it’s just a way to get the cast into an unfamiliar location so that strange things can begin to happen to them.

On the way to an observation mission, the squad comes under fire and is forced to make a detour. Exploring the area, they come across an ancient statue carved into a rock face. After some exposition, the redneck soldier decides to use it as target practice. And you just know that when it falls apart, the tale told of Djinn being trapped in objects isn’t just a tale.

They soon get back on track and get to the location they’re supposed to be observing. A road that the enemy are traveling by. Only problem is, there is no road. The arrival of a mysterious woman in the middle of a sandstorm, and the higher-ups telling them they’ve failed their mission throws a bit of stress their way.

And then things start to go really wrong. People disappear, have bad dreams, see ghosts… And the mysterious lady gets even creepier.

Despite studio interference in how the final cut of the movie turned out, it is actually a very effective movie. There’s a nice slow build up, with everything slowly getting worse.

There’s plenty of moments that are just downright creepy. One moment with the dark, and a flashlight especially.

The production design is great. The look of the film (shot on super 16) is great and almost everything about the film works. Except some really bad CG.

And even though one CGI moment is especially bad, it’s never quite bad enough to completely take you out of the movie.

It’s definitely not for everyone. It’s light on the gore, barely a jump scare in sight, and it moves at a slow pace and it’s not really scary. But it works, and it has more than enough creepiness and atmosphere to reward the viewer.