After several films about the true to life tales of heroism and depravity concerning the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq it seems time for something completely different. Red Sands attempts to adjust the silly quotient of ripped-from-the-headlines inspired storytelling by setting a group of US troops in the middle-of-nowhere Afghanistan against a vengeful spirit that has an ancient grudge against humans. I applaud the effort, but the execution fails on so many levels. In the end, actually very little of the film is truly engaging, and the parts that attract your interest seem almost flukes or just following in the graces of other, similar films.

Red Sands stars Shane West as Keller, a soldier fighting under the command of Master Sergeant Howston (Leonard Roberts) whose unit is order to a deserted sector to monitor Taliban activity. On the way to the survey point, the soldiers foolishly use a pre-Islamic idol for some target practice. (Although, in their defence, I’m sure if they had know the act would unleash an ancient evil they would have thought twice about it.) As the men settle into their assignment, the monster begins to pick them off one by one. The creature in question: a djinn, an ancient spirit made of flameless smoke now known famously as a genie.

Truly director Alex Turner and writer Simon Barrett seemed inspired to do something a little different, but inspiration is really where any sense of originality ends with Red Sands. Have you ever seen Aliens or The Thing? Yep, Turner and Barrett have too. That’s okay, because if you’re going to steal, you might as well steal from the best and make a day of it. However, those films had interesting characters with personalities and motivation. In the film’s opening, each of the soldier’s names and rank are shown on screen in a title card, as if to say, “Hey, these guys are real people! They have full names and everything.”

And far be it for me, someone who’s currently working in independent film myself, to observe but the movie looks kind of fake. There’s a shot at the beginning with Black Hawk helicopters flying over Kabul that was so badly composited that you couldn’t even say that it looks like it was done on somebody’s home computer, because I’ve seen stuff done on people’s home computers that look better. The film also has a “backlot” look and feel; believe me I’ve seen enough movie to recognize the deserts of southern California when I seen them. Again, far be it for me to judge, but between the generic quality of the script to the generic look of the film, the material really has no where to go.

And can I take a moment to revisit the acting and talk about how Shane West is about as convincing as a battle hardened US soldier as he was a Tom Sawyer in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-In-Name-Only movie. The always excellent J.K. Simmons gets second from the top billing, but his total screen-time can probably be easily measured in seconds. So that’s another strike against this film, which I think brings its count up to 10. Regardless, I have a lot of fondness for the concept but I just wish it had been done with a greater degree of panache. But seeing as how they keep pumping out those other movies about Afghanistan despite the public reception, it’s not impossible to think that someone else might try this again.