Arrow in the Head: I Can't Sand It

Year: 2015

Director: Isaac Gabaeff

Cast: Brooke Butler, Meagan Holder, Jamie Kennedy

Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I have a very special announcement to share with you. After three and a half months of writing horror news for Arrow in the Head, I have been asked to write my first official review for their hallowed pages. There’s no telling if or when I’ll write another one, but I’m happy to share with you my very first, a review of the Jamie Kennedy sand monster movie The Sand.

…We all gotta start somewhere.

Check out the full review here!

Additional Notes: Phew, now that we’re back on safe ground, I’m free to be as free form and bluntly honest as I like. The gloves are off, baby! The worst thing about The Sand is that it’s not even bad enough to hate. It’s just plain dull. It wants to be bad-good so much (or at least I assume, considering that it opens with a topless sunbather kicking the bucket), but it’s hardly even bad-bad. It’s just bleh-bleh.

The opening is promising, alternating between the traditionally shot empty beach vistas and found footage debauchery from the night before, but it goes on for what feels like ten minutes. Or a decade. It’s just plain grueling, and the ending is even worse, holding on two characters emoting poorly for a ludicrously sustained period. I’d rather have watched my roommate wash the dishes. And he’d probably rather I washed the dishes myself. But I’m too busy with important work commitments. Like eviscerating The Sand.

The Sand is not the worst film I’ve ever seen, bt the acting is mostly juvenile (Cynthia Murell’s every line is delivered in a nasal whine, and Cleo Berry literally drools as he’s speaking), the gender politics are hideously reductive yet think they’re redeeming, and major plot points or character beats are shelved and forgotten for half hours at a time. An entire death occurs that filmmakers apparently forgot to include in the finished cut. It’s sloppy, it’s inane, it’s bland, and it includes the line “he’s stuck in a goddamned trash can without any hope,” delivered with the earnestness of a Borgnine. But I’m glad I was given the chance to tackle it, and I hope I did y’all dedicated readers proud.

Peace and love, guys.

TL;DR: The Sand is a poorly acted, boring, film laced with terrible CGI.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1141