Sand, The (2015)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring Brooke Butler, Jamie Kennedy, Cleo Berry
Directed by Isaac Gabaeff
Put a bunch of drunken boobs on a beach, throw in a little creature lurking under the sand, and overload the runtime with moronic action and senseless dialogue, and VIOLA! You’ve got a film worthy of B-movie mentioning… funny thing is, aside from all of the above ingredients, Isaac Gabaeff’s The Sand wasn’t all that (ahem) bad. Get ready to apply your sunscreen liberally, as the rays from this mess could prove damaging to fair skin.
We set the scene on a picturesque beach where a small assembly of drunk college kids have convened for a post-graduation bash, and after the dawn has come, it’s clear to see that the hangover fairy has paid the kids a visit, but she’s not the only unexplained anomaly on these shores. It turns out that as the sun comes up, something also rises from the powdery waterfront, and it’s devouring these intoxicated dimwits in large bites (there IS an explanation for this lunacy, but I’m not spilling the deets).
So we have bro-tastic douches, voluptuous bimbos, and Jamie Kennedy as a wise-cracking cop – they’re all in the mix, and they’re all in serious trouble, and don’t even get me started on the fat guy trapped in a trashcan for the majority of the film with a dick painted on his face… WOW. You’d be under the assumption that the party had many more attendees by all of the clothes strewn around the beach, but now that it’s the next day, it’s as if they were never there in the first place. Simple situations are left to chance here as well – the night before, everyone’s cell phones are pitched into a locked car trunk so the party’s goings-on won’t hit the internet… REALLY? In this day and age where someone can’t go to the bathroom in peace without a full-scale assault posted for all to see on social media, and NOBODY had a phone on them? SUUURE.
The fact that nobody can find a way off of this small stretch of beach, or that the local law enforcement officer (Kennedy) that’s on-scene to “assist” is merely there to antagonize the kids is another hopeless attempt to toss some much-needed humor into this debacle – no dice, however. Performance-wise, every stereotypical foothold is represented with the slut, the good-girl, the nerd, and your comic-relief… in a trash can… with a phallus scribed on his face. Gabaeff should be patted on the back for the attempt at B-movie notoriety, but the overladen CGI dooms this presentation the minute someone is sucked down through the terra firma – a little bit is passable visually, but there are scenes here where too much is WAY too much.
Overall, The Sand could be good for a midnight watch where goofiness is happily embraced and the need for creature fun is welcome; however, once the sun comes up, it’s best to find a lot of shade from this solar disaster.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
