4 out of 5

Director: Alex Turner

Gadzooks, how did Alex Turner and Simon Barrett make Red Sands after this genius move in slow-burn horror?  I pushed Dead Birds on about a million people when I first saw it, but it’s flaws kept them from loving it as I did, and on subsequent viewings, keep it from being perfect – it is pretty slow, and although each character is developed very well and strongly, the eventual resolution of each of their storylines feels a bit muddled together to meet the needs of the story.  Plus, there are some nits about the consistency of “rules,” here, but such is generally the case with supernatural horror.  There’s a couple nice genre mashups here – period piece, robbery thriller, haunted house horror – and while horror is the primary ingredient (evident in the creepy music and slow build and music-sting scares and… gore), the extras on the DVD mention that this was approached more as a historical flick that happened to include horror, and I think the slow pacing is evidence of that.  Civil War times, some thieves shack up at an abandoned house during a storm before crossing the border, and start learning about some nefarious things that may have happened at said house… cue the spooks.  DB does one of my favorite horror moves of giving you some gore shots right up front and then waiting for the rest of the movie to amp it up again, sort of letting you know they’re okay with the blood… just wait for it…  Imaginative creatures and effects provided by Rob Hall’s After Human.  The film is missing some X element to make it mind blowing, but if you go into this without expectations (except that it’s slow going, even at 90 minutes), you should be surprised.