In short: Red Sands (2009)

A small troop (and don't ask this pacifist who is officially unfit to be drafted to use correct military terminology, please) of American soldiers in Afghanistan is ordered to watch a road somewhere in the desert for Taliban activity. Turns out it isn't their lucky day - the stone building they're supposed to use as their base is there, unocuppied but for two corpses, but there's no road in sight. A nearby village looks like it has been hastily deserted.

The situation isn't improved by the nightmares the men start to have, or the daytime visions of people for whose deaths they have been responsible, or the sandstorm that's bringing a strange woman (Mercedes Masöhn) with it.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that the Americans' vehicle does not work anymore and that the contact to their HQ is breaking down, either. And, as is so often the case in horror films, after the tools have broken down, it's time for people to break down themselves. If you believe in things like it, you could start to think there is a djinn having his fun with the soldiers.

Red Sands is a sister film to Dead Birds, a bank-robbers-in-the-Old-West-meet-Asian-style-ghosts-in-a-hut film by the same director/producer (Alex Turner) and the same writer (Simon Barrett), going for the same sort of brooding atmosphere as the earlier film, but losing most of the gore, while keeping much of the same plot structure and morals.

Instead of the gore, the film makers try their hand at playing with some very contemporary anxieties connected to the USA's occupation of Afghanistan, a feeling that those soldiers really do not belong where they are, as well as a very matter of fact conviction that a small war like this still brings huge amounts of guilt with it that somehow will accumulate until they grow into something well fit to bite someone in the backend.

Red Sands does not try to explore these themes very deeply, but it is still one or two steps ahead of the bulk of horror films about war or war zones which usually go the safer route of World War II (as not to annoy the conservatives or the liberals, I suppose).

The film was shot in Afghanistan itself (probably for not much money at that), giving Turner quite a few possibilities to milk the terror of large, empty spaces. A mood of oppressive forces gathering just outside of one's view is in fact its main strength, picking up the slack where rather clichéd characterization and mediocre at best special effects let the film down. Said mood, the seldom used background and a general vibe of film makers wanting to make an intelligent (or at least non-stupid) horror movie, are in my book more than enough to recommend Red Sands.

 

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