The Sand

Take "The Sand" for what it is. And if you do that, it is a fun little flick.

It is a B movie with minimal budget, minimal special effects, filmed in one location and with a cast of unknowns and still it has an interesting premise.

I see it as a homage to the 50's man-in-a-rubber-suit monster film. And it works very well in this respect. The difference being that instead of a monsters something weird is crawling under the sand.

It is a little bit longer that it should be, some of the characters are annoying, but still it is worth a rental

THE SAND is, in essence, a film version of that 'floor is lava' game you used to play as a kid (you know, where you and your friends - or just you if you had no friends) weren't allowed to touch the floor because you'd die, so you had to clamber over furniture and jump a lot. Man, I used to love that game. Anyway, this cheapie has the same premise. A bunch of uninteresting characters are trapped on a beach with a killer creature in the sand. A bench, a lifeguard hut, a trash bin, and an open-top car are the only refuge. This single location movie sees them trying to figure out a way to escape without being eaten by a tentacled nasty.

This film's connections with the 1980s monster movie BLOOD BEACH are numerous, although it's much lower key and smaller scale, unsurprising given the lack of budget. Despite being a majorly flawed film, I still enjoyed it as I've always enjoyed similar single location movies. The acting is pretty bad and the CGI effects are really terrible (worse even than in an Asylum film) but THE SAND offers mild suspense all the way through and you can certainly do a lot worse.

A party on the beach takes a whole new turn when these two teens find an egg. The next day, it apparently hatches, and takes over the sand, devouring anybody who comes into contact with the sand. The plot was intriguing if it was SyFy TV movie standards, however it is not. I felt is if this was one of those plots that could've been much better, but when given, we get utter crap. The execution of this entire plot felt lazy, and slower than it really could've been. The characters we are given to follow through this entire movie were just annoying. The film tries passing them off as smart, or perhaps quick thinking, but in this case make them seem even more clichéd, and low-minded than usual. I don't mean to sound rude, but come on. The film passes them off as clichéd characters who try burning off movie runtime by bickering about the typical "You slept with my boyfriend" gimmick, usually seem in these horror films. With the characters, as if the clichéd, overly common characters weren't enough, try taking the horrible acting, and dialog why not? The acting in this movie isn't even comically bad, it literally stands as just flat out bad. The dialog is atrocious, once again, the film attempts to make these characters supposed hero's, but instead make them seem stupid, and even more clichéd as usual. The given dialog, at points, seems so horribly stupid, and at points even angering. The decisions in this film, as well, are dreadful! There were so many things these characters could of done to make this film make so much sense! But no, they took the wrong turns, pretty much at all the supposed right times. They make the stupidest decisions, when it's unbelievably obvious at points. Finally for the SyFy vibed' part of the film. The CGI. This film has CGI that seems better off as SyFy, TV movie material. There's parts where it looked like unfinished, horribly placed CGI tentacles, as well as gore, and blood. They were horribly placed at times, other times looked unfinished, and fake, overall, just not a very good attempt at CGI. At all.

In conclusion, why. This film took so many wrong turns, and lacked so much it's just hard to follow. The characters are annoying, clichéd, and executed with terrible acting. The CGI was literally like recycled SyFy material half the times, the film makes us sit through the characters making some of the stupidest decisions, in some of the most obvious of situations, leading to heavy disappointment, and even anger at some points. The dialog is just dreadful, and overall, this film tries passing up the typical teen - character - horror film clichés, which failed, and just lead to more disappointment. I wouldn't recommend this film unless you're into terrible films that, in fact, aren't so bad it's good .. but just plainly bad.

Surprisingly entertaining and well acted, The Sand isn't hardcore horror. There isn't a load of blood and guts, but when I was about 9, I saw a movie like this one called Blood Beach. That stuff was traumatizing and this one, brought back nice memories of that scary movie. The actors are quite likable (most of them anyway), making it tough to watch them bite the dust and my biggest plus was the fact that they acted like REAL PEOPLE. They handled things the way I would've which made it easier to root for them. On the down side, the CGI sucked (there's not much of it though) and the story would veer into 90210 levels of drama at times (is now really the right time to talk about who banged who?)

The Sand is an easily digestible horror flick, short and fun to watch on a weekend if the genre mood strikes you.

Granted, this movie had score a relatively low rating here on IMDb, and I probably should take heed of that. But there was just something about the movie's cover with the tentacle that was alluring and interesting, and that made me actually sit down to watch this 2015 horror movie.

Naturally I didn't have much of any expectations to the movie, because I had never heard about it prior to actually finding the movie.

With this being your typical late-teen / young adult horror movie, then you can expect pointless and tacky nudity, which totally doesn't serve the movie in any way.

"The Sand" (aka "Killer Beach") actually starts out well enough and doesn't waste any time in establishing a backstory or such. So there is action from almost the very beginning of the movie. And there was no need to establish that, because you don't need to be particularly attached to the characters in the movie for it to work properly.

The special effects and CGI in the movie were serving their purposes well enough, although you can clearly see that it is computer animated. Some of the CGI was actually downright laughable to witness. But still, it does look adequate enough, and it is much better than the special effects in many other horror movies.

They actually had some fair acting talents in the movie. And I must admit that I wasn't familiar with anyone in the movie aside from Jamie Kennedy. Now, I can't claim to be a fan of Jamie Kennedy in any way, but he was actually cut out for this particular character. It should be said that people in the movie were actually doing good jobs with their given roles and characters.

Writers Alex Greenfield and Ben Powell actually came up with an interesting concept for the plot and script. And I will say that the storyline was original, so that was a nice and fresh approach.

The most disappointing aspect to the movie, aside from the questionable CGI effects, was that you had to wait almost to the very end of the movie before tentacles started to emerge from the sand. Up to that point it was small wriggling tendrils that emerged from the sand. I had expected more tentacle action from the movie, especially given the movie's cover. However, I will say that the fluorescent tentacle was really worth the wait, because that was cool and looked good.

The atmosphere of the movie was good, and there was a real sense of dread and endangerment to the young people marooned on the beach.

All in all, then I actually found "The Sand" to be an adequately entertaining movie, though it is hardly the type of movie that you will watch more than a single time - provided that you actually manage to sit through it the first time. My rating for "The Sand" is a mediocre five stars out of ten.