THE SAND Gets Soggy

THE SAND (Blu-ray)

2015 / 84 min

Rising Sun Media

Available at www.MovieZyng.com

Review by Josey, the Sudden Cat🙀

About a thousand years ago, I wasted hard-earned allowance money to catch Blood Beach, a tacky little creature feature about a subterranean monster that sucks its victims down into the sand. But in my defense, the movie’s tagline - Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, you can’t get to it - was too tempting to resist.

But you can resist The Sand, a low-wattage 2015 flick with a similar premise. 

After a night of hard partying on the beach, several twentysomethings wake up the next morning. Some are in a car, a couple are in a lifeguard shack and one poor bastard is stuck in a barrel. Almost immediately, the film establishes them as unlikable and obnoxious, but at least they look good in bathing suits. When one girl sets foot on the sand, she quickly gets sucked beneath. So does the guy who foolishly tries to rescue her…a scene that succinctly establishes The Sand as a cheap flick with cut-rate CGI, including the gore effects.

"You've never actually surfed, have you?"

When they aren’t bickering over who’s cheating on who, the rest try to find a way of escaping the beach without stepping on the sand. At this point, we still might hold out hope that The Sand will be good for a few shits & giggles, even with shoddy special effects, awful dialogue and characters you’d never want to hang out with in real life. However, the movie slows to a crawl wherever people aren’t being eaten, operating on the assumption that anyone gives a damn about their personal drama. 

Just when you think the movie won’t get worse, Jamie Kennedy shows up as an idiotic beach cop. Though he’s the most recognizable member of the cast, it’s essentially a glorified cameo. But with a unique talent for making just about any movie worse, Kennedy and his stupidly-written character need only a few minutes to drag the rest of this one into the sand with the other victims. 

Then there’s the ending. Oh, wait a minute…what ending? Though the monster is finally revealed in all its glory (looking like the final boss of a video game), the story itself just sorta peters out into nothing before the credits role. The Sand might be good for a moment or two of unintentional laughter, especially with such a dead-serious tone. But ultimately, it seldom even rises to the level of endearingly tacky.