Djinns (2010)

Sometimes I spend my evenings just surfing on the various sites where I buy my dvds from, just to see if I've missed something. Sometimes there is a movie or two that slipped under my radar, and we cant have that, can we?! Such a movie is the french horrorflick Djinns aka Stranded which is the english title on the dvd I bought. I dont know exactly why I bought other than that the story interested me, it had no english reviews on Imdb. Only a trailer. So I decided to take a plunge, it wasnt that expensive.

Looking bad I dont really know if it was a good thing or not. Djinns isnt a bad movie, on the contrary, it is well shot and well acted. Problem is, it never really goes anywhere, it doesnt stand out. The story, about French soldiers lost in the Algerian desert during the sixties while looking for a lost plane, is interesting and the supernatural parts of it are tittilating, there arent many djinnmovies out there (The only one I can think of at the moment is Alex Turners Red Sands which was a major letdown after his great Deadbirds,) and the movie does create a creepy version of them. The soldiers find a walled city in the middle of nowhere and a siege of sorts begins, with the djinns creating and feeding on bloody conflicts. And thats basically all there is, the soldiers fighting amongst themselves over petty things that escalate into violence. I wanted more demons, more supernatural carnage. I got a... thriller? Still, it is not a bad movie. Just not the movie I hoped it was gonna be.

And dont you love that cover that features something I thought was lost after the eighties, the added muzzle flash to a weapon to give an indication of great action. Yeah, right. I dont think so.