Red Sands

There's too much talk and not enough action in Dead Birds director Alex Turner's second wartime horror. Slow and predictable, it sees bored US soldiers in Afghanistan inadvertently unleash something demonic by destroying an ancient statue. But although Turner puts great energy into depicting the tedium of military life, he neglects to make even the story's supernatural elements exciting. So after a plethora of uninspiring scenes in which the stereotyped troops patrol or just sit around, the best thrill-hungry viewers get is a few hallucinatory dream sequences that fall flat courtesy of increasingly poor CGI. When death finally strikes, the focus is on the repercussions rather than the kill, with the men's paranoia and deadly infighting proving unimaginative and tension-free. An ultra-obvious twist follows an awful climax, leaving only the atmospherically shot desert landscapes to impress.