Thanks for the memories!

As Good As It Gets

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

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

You may think the enemy is Al Qaeda, but you better be careful what you do while watching for them.A group of soldiers make the mistake of unleashing the Djinn, who exist alongside humans and angels, and make up the triumvirate of God's creation. The Djinn are mentioned frequently in the Qur'an, and there is a Surah entitled Al-Jinn.They are stuck in a house watching a road you can't even see, when a woman shows up. Not a good idea with six horny GIs who have nothing to do.One of the group starts having some strange dreams in this film that is more a psychological thriller than horror. The others are having flashbacks to the atrocities they committed.Soon, the members of the group start turning on each other with deadly consequences.Then there is only one left with the Djinn. Who will win? Fascinating story with some great cinematography. Not a bad 89 minutes. It even had J.K. Simmons at the end.

I decided to watch this based on the few good reviews posted here and all I can say is thanks for tricking me out of two hours of my life! If you've been watching horror movies since the 80's as I have I don't see how you can possibly enjoy this movie.A group of dysfunctional soldiers manages to release a Djinn by shooting a statue.... maybe?! The movie never bothers to show you where the thing came from. The Djinn is a shape-shifter which manages to isolate and destroy each member of the team one by one in a thoroughly gruesome way.... is what I'd like to say! What actually happens is the thing kills one guy! And we don't even get to see it happen he just shows up dead. After that the team starts to fall apart and they all kill each other. The Djinn may or may not have played a part in this it's not really made clear. Mostly the Djinn spends the whole movie as an Arabic woman crouched in the corner... how terrifying! If this is how Djinn kill people we may as well free them all, we manage to kill ourselves ten times faster than they ever could.When we finally see "the monster" it's just more of the computer generated garbage you see in all low budget horror flicks nowadays.This movie is so bad it's on the level of being a SciFi original.

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.