Netflix’s psychological thriller The Sand Fortress is way more than the common deserted-island survival story. Akin to previous entries throughout the subgenre like LOST and Sweatheart, the movie does embrace its typical plotlines, like having characters face up to harsh components, try totally different strategies of escape, and encounter eerie happenings. Nevertheless, the streaming service’s Lebanese drama differs in its focus — utilizing these tropes as a backdrop to discover the thoughts at warfare.
Directed by Matty Brown, recognized for brief movies like The Distraction, The Sand Fortress follows a fractured household of 4 attempting to outlive alone on a distant island someplace within the Mediterranean Sea. Fortunately, they’ve a working lighthouse to take refuge in and entice rescue. Nevertheless, as the times go with none phrase from the skin world, their survival turns into unsure, tensions rise, and the as soon as idyllic sanctuary regularly reveals a surprising actuality.
Moreover, all through the movie, the reality behind the household’s circumstances is more and more muddled by the creativeness of their youngest baby, Jana (Riman Al Rafeea). So, by the point the credit roll, it may be exhausting to find out what really occurred (or if any of it occurred in any respect). This is a easy clarification of The Sand Fortress, its ending, and the final word fates of its enduring characters.
The Sand Fortress
- Launch Date
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January 24, 2025
- Runtime
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98 Minutes
- Director
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Matty Brown
Stream
The Island: Blurring Actuality with Creativeness
The film begins with Jana taking part in on the island. As she describes it towards the monstrous ocean surrounding them each, the small landmass comes throughout as a secure haven for her, her mom Yasmine (Nadine Labaki), father Nabil (Ziad Bakri), and older brother Adam (Zain Al Rafeea), with a lighthouse appearing as a house base. To her, the island is something and all the things she desires it to be as she explores, builds sand castles, and performs make-believe. In distinction, the remainder of her household acknowledge their dire scenario — their perspective the presumed narrative of the story.
Nevertheless, because the movie progresses, surreal occasions happen, making audiences not sure of actuality. Most notably, when Jana is digging below her sand fortress, she uncovers a big yellow raft. After poking a gap in it, the ability goes out within the lighthouse. Rapidly, Jana scoops sand again over it and walks away like she was hiding a damaged rule. This scene poses so many questions: why was it buried within the first place, how is it related to the ability, and why did she conceal her discovery when she’d beforehand been so desirous to share all of the others?
From this level ahead, viewers watch increasingly inexplicable occasions. Jana chases an unidentified shadow drawing over her art work on the lighthouse. Nabil is mysteriously attacked underwater. A pink shoe is discovered and buried. Yasmine hallucinates Jana drowning. Adam watches a TV fall from the sky. Because the island turns into unstable, what’s actual and what is not actual is unclear. Nevertheless, remembering that Jana perceives that place as a protecting power, viewers can conclude that it wasn’t actual in any respect. Really, the island is part of Jana’s creativeness; its strangeness symbolizing her reminiscences bleeding into her fantasy world.
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What Actually Occurred to Jana and Her Household?
Understanding that the island is only a figment of Jana’s creativeness, it is exhausting to definitively decide her and her household’s destiny. On-screen, audiences see the dad and mom go away. Nabil succumbs to his damage and hallucinations, and Yasmine drowns when she goes after a delusion of Jana calling out for assist in the ocean.
Solely Adam and Jana are left because the movie nears its climax, the previous taking over the accountability for his or her survival by fixing the lighthouse, contacting assist over the radio, and utilizing kites to sign rescue. Nevertheless, when Adam sees a ship within the distance, he swims out towards it and by no means returns. The motivation behind his selection is unclear, nevertheless it’s secure to imagine he did not make it out alive both. Jana, now alone, watches helplessly because the ocean begins swallowing up the island, too.
Because the movie wraps up, fractured reminiscences of Jana in her house nation fill the display screen. We see a faculty bombing, the pink shoe from earlier on the foot of her lifeless sister Yara, and pictures of a childhood devastated by warfare. Thus, the true nature of the island and its uncommon occasions have originated from Jana’s traumatic previous. As she escaped armed battle bodily, she additionally retreats mentally — solely discovering refuge from actuality in an imagined world.
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In the long run, The Sand Fortress leaves viewers with Jana floating on a well-known yellow raft with kite-like flags adorning the vessel. An enormous mild from an approaching rescue boat (much like the one the lighthouse emitted) finds her. The digicam lingers on Jana’s face, her eyes huge and shell-shocked, earlier than the display screen goes black. Whereas the filmmakers do not affirm if this scene is actual or one other considered one of Jana’s fantasies, audiences know the horrors that she confronted earlier than that time definitely are.
The Horrors of Struggle
Regardless of The Sand Fortress’s surreal storytelling, its filmmakers defined their goal to viewers earlier than the credit to ensure its that means wasn’t misplaced alongside the best way. Their parting message reads: “Practically 500 million kids worldwide dwell in areas affected by armed battle. They dwell in fixed worry, experiencing grave violations of their rights, together with pressured displacement with severe impacts on psychological well being. This movie is devoted to all the kids who’re pressured to dwell in their very own creativeness in an effort to survive.”
Thus, the film’s ambiguous ending, akin to well-known stumpers like Inception or Birdman, is important to the general level. It does not matter what’s actual or not actual on the island, or if Jana and her household survived that place. The movie poignantly highlights the brutality of fight, the psychological turmoil it causes resulting in victims shedding their grip on actuality, and the harmless kids who can not really be children due to all of it — solely in a position to cope and endure by their fantasy worlds. We’ll by no means know for positive if Jana survived on that raft, simply because the world won’t ever know all of the lives of those that’ve been unnecessarily misplaced due to warfare.
Stream The Sand Fortress on Netflix now.