Exclusives
Is ‘Red Sands’ Really a Sequel to ‘Dead Birds’? What’s Next?!
Arriving on DVD February 24th from Sony Home Entertainment and Stage 6 Films is Alex Turner and Simon Barrett Red Sands (trailer), which follows the story of a group of U.S. soldiers who face a deadly supernatural force after they destroy an ancient statue. We caught up with writer Simon Barrett who talked with us a bit about his forthcoming projects, while he also addresses the rumor that SANDS is actual a sequel to Barrett and Turner’s DEAD BIRDS.
It has been said that RED SANDS is an unofficial sequel to DEAD BIRDS in a planned trilogy. Barrett clears the air on exactly what it is.
“We’ve been lousy at clarifying this,” Barrett confesses. “RED SANDS is not really a sequel. It has an ostensibly different supernatural mythology than DEAD BIRDS.
“However, RED SANDS and DEAD BIRDS are both scripts that I conceived as being similar, both thematically and in other ways,” he continues. “For one thing, they’re both obviously period horror stories dealing with conflicts in our country’s history. DEAD BIRDS was set during the Civil War and used the institution of slavery for some of its horror stuff, and RED SANDS obviously is set in the time shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, when a lot of people were criticizing our military response. I’ve always thought it’s interesting to set a horror story in a time and place where people are already on edge.”
As for the third film in the “trilogy,” Barrett reveals that while his agent says it should take place in the future, he wants to stick to his original theme.
“We’ve had a lot of conversations about what the third film will be. Our agent thinks it should be futuristic, and I have some cool ideas there, but it doesn’t fit with my original concept. The thing is, I do have a script written for the third film in the trilogy, and Alex wants to do it, but I’m not convinced we can get it made. ”
His story heads back in time (once again), this time to 1586…
“It would be set in 1586, right when this country was first being settled by the British, and is much more of a horror-action thing, with a lot of disease horror and mutation elements. But because that script has more action and gore than DEAD BIRDS or RED SANDS – like, on a zombie apocalypse movie scale – it’s more difficult to get financed. It would be a significantly larger film; we’d need about ten times the budget of RED SANDS to film this one. And getting the money to shoot RED SANDS wasn’t exactly easy.
“So, if you want to see the third film in the trilogy, go rent the RED SANDS DVD, I guess. Or buy one! Or several! They make excellent coasters,” Barrett jokes.
Now that RED SANDS is coming out, it;s time to look to the future, Barrett reveals a few tid-bits about what’s to come.
“I’ve directed a few shorts, but I do plan to direct something on a larger scale. We’ll see if that ever happens,” he continues, “In terms of my immediate projects, I just finished a deal to develop an internet series called ‘death_chain‘, which would be a fun slasher horror thing, you know, with nudity and gore, not as serious as RED SANDS or DEAD BIRDS. But that’s a television-style deal, meaning that I haven’t even delivered scripts yet, and then the studio might just decide to not film anything. So I’m not counting on that, although I’d love to see it happen and think it would be quite successful.”
He also reveals that he’ll be working with POP SKULL director Adam Wingard on a new serial killer drama.
“I’m also working with Adam Wingard, who directed POP SKULL and HOME SICK, to independently produce a serial killer drama that I wrote, which is right now called A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE. We start shooting that in March, so I’m pretty busy with that right now. We’re doing that very low budget, for just $75,000, totally outside of Hollywood, just to be productive. It should be interesting.”
But Barrett is a more than just a screenwriter, he’s also writing a young adult novel!
“I’ve also been writing a young adult novel that I’m really proud of, and I have some more scripts in the works that I’m trying to finish. Hopefully that will all get done soon. I keep neglecting my writing for these other projects.”
You can pick up RED SANDS on DVD February 24th.
Exclusives
‘The Space Between’ Exclusive Teaser Trailer – Damian Maffei Stars in Indie Liminal Horror Movie
Liminal horror is all the rage right now in the wake of A24’s Backrooms dominating the box office, and up next from the sub-genre is the indie film The Space Between.
We recently told you that The Space Between had wrapped production inside an operational Midwestern mall, and now we’re exclusively debuting the teaser trailer today.
Damian Maffei (The Strangers: Prey At Night, Wrong Turn, Haunt) stars in The Space Between. Watch the teaser trailer below, and also find the official poster underneath.
Maffei plays Rick, an overnight security guard working inside a once-bustling shopping mall after closing. While quietly carrying the grief of losing his daughter, Rick clings to the structure of his nightly routine as a form of stability. Over the course of a single shift, that routine begins to fracture as something unseen retraces his every step.
Kate Kiddo (Black Eyed Susan, The Events Surrounding a Peeping Tom) co-stars in the liminal horror movie as Dispatch, Rick’s only point of contact during the night. She is a calm and steady voice guiding him through his rounds as the system he relies on begins to break down.
Production took place inside an operational Midwestern mall, utilizing real locations after hours to ground the film’s surveillance-driven psychological horror and liminal atmosphere. Built through a lean independent model, the production focused on performance, practical environments, and atmosphere.
Filmmakers were granted unlimited access to more than 96,000 square feet of retail, corridor, and back-of-house space for critical sequences, allowing the production to capture the scale, emptiness, and unsettling realism of a functioning mall after dark.
Writer/director Joshua Garity tells Bloody Disgusting, “The original image that helped define the internet’s idea of liminal horror was traced back to Wisconsin, and that matters because those are the kinds of spaces I grew up in. They were once the heartbeat of a community, but many of them have slowly eroded into something more unnerving. Half-empty malls that still echo with laughter, if you listen closely and strip away the fresh coats of paint. The Space Between comes from that same Midwestern familiarity. It’s not about recreating Backrooms, but about exploring why these spaces stay with you: the absence, the repetition, and the feeling that a place you know is somehow watching you back.”
The Space Between is targeting a Fall 2026 release. Stay tuned for updates.
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