La malédiction des sables

In 1923 Cecil B. DeMille filmed "The Ten Commandments". The filming location was Nipomo Dunes on the California coast, San Luis Obispo County. Near Pismo Beach the home of the Pismo clam.

There he buried the film set after making the picture. Some modern-day archaeologists dig it back up only to find that is not all they dug up.

Rats, no flame throwers but at lease White Phosphorus grenades will work just as well. I got a chance to use a couple of those critters during a military practice.

This film has a Hallmark feel to it and does not take too much time to make CGI look real.

With all the negatives it is still fun to pass the time with if you like all the sci-fi quickie movies where evil pops up mostly in desert scenes.

Which is actually one of those "Leper with the most fingers" distinctions.

The plot is kind of straightforward. We discover that an ancient evil was entrapped in an artifact. That artifact was moved to the United States by Cecil B. Demille, who used it in his first version of the Ten Commandments, then inexplicably buried the sets in the middle of the desert.

Flash to the present day, where a married couple of archaeologists played by Firefly veterans Adam Baldwin and Morena Baccarin, uncover the city, with the help of an Iraq War vet and his grandfather. What follows are the typical made for TV kills of ancillary characters, a dune buggy chase and some bad CGI.

Still, I'm recommending this film on the basis of the characterizations by Baldwin and Baccarin.

I'm at this very moment debating whether I should even finish watching this "poppycock" of a movie. They had a pretty interesting idea, with the buried movie set, and that was it. So far this incomprehensible mess has no real story. There is the buried set, some wolf headed monster running amok, an amulet, and a bunch of bad actors attacked by the wolf masked whatever it is. What I would have missed, had I had the good sense to eject this nonsense is a dune buggy chase, some really bad C.G.I., some incredibly stupid dialog, more bad C.G.I., and the hero fighting paper cut outs. Other than the original idea, this film has absolutely zero redeeming qualities. My mistake for continuing to watch. - MERK

I found "Sands of Oblivion" to be passable entertainment, which I kept watching for the joy of seeing Jayne and Inara together again. The evil entity was pretty lame....what was its goals? Take over the world, or just kill people because he/it was angry about something? The efforts of the hero and heroine were all aimed at saving themselves, which didn't seem to be worth documenting.

I liked the hero, Jayne and Inara did well, the special effects were OK, there was good comic relief with the Buford character, and a really good shock early on in the show. I didn't miss the two hours I spent on this show. For those reasons, I give it a six out of ten.

Sands of Oblivion is not a bad movie, it's just that it is not a particularly good one either. It did have potential to be though, with one of the best ideas SyFy ever had. The acting while not great is pretty decent, the dune buggy chase is exciting, the film is photographed quite nicely in more places than not and there is some striking scenery. However, the special effects are uneven, none of them are as bad as the ones(for example) for Titanic II but while some are serviceable, others are on the cheap side. The script is rather lazy and never consistent in tone, the story lacks thrills, a genuine sense of adventure and suspense for a movie typical of this genre and is never sure of what it wants to be and the characters are underdeveloped and clichéd(not just genre clichés but SyFy clichés too). In conclusion, lacklustre, had a wonderful idea and started off promisingly but fizzled out. 4/10 Bethany Cox