That was an excellent one.

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Some kids party at a beach. It is decided that for the sake of fun, all cell phones will be confiscated. Further into the night some kids find some large cocoon-type thing.The next morning the beach is pretty empty except for one girl who's topless on a bench, two kids who are in lifeguard tower, three kids in a car and one guy is stuck in trash container.When topless girl steps into the sand, filaments grow out of it and she's sucked into the sand. In some poor and bizarre editing/directing choice, at the very same time some other guy from the car is also attacked by the sand as he's trying to make his way out of the car. And in yet another terrible decision, neither the kids nor the editor/director care for the dying girl but go nuts over the guy.For some there's no one else anywhere near the beach and they have no access to their cellphone. So the question is, how will the remaining kids get out of this situation, who will live and who will die? If you understand Hollywood politics, you know the answer to the second question. All that remains then is the how. And it's a long and slow process. The girl in the tower will be the leader and heroine, the poor guy with her has a thing for her so of course she treats him like trash. Occasionally they will come up with some idea but they sure take their time. It's near the end when finally there's some progress.The Sand is then a low-budget horror thriller, with uneven performances, cheesy but not horrible CGI effects, a script with a good concepts but that runs out of ideas. Clearly the main limitation here is the budget. This movie deserved better. We needed a better director and editor, a larger cast, more scares, more gore, more nudity. The problem is that given the main idea and the low budget, the movie should have been more fun and campy instead it takes itself too seriously. It's an enjoyable movie for what it is and certainly better than what most here think.

Awakening the morning after a beach-party, a group of teens find that the sand around them contains a vicious, unseen creature that pulls them underneath the beach and tries to find a way of stopping the curious creature in order to get away alive.This here was an incredibly fun and enjoyable effort. One of the best parts to this one is the fact that there's such an enjoyably creepy air of menace here that works very well in the film's favor, as it really manages to get a lot out of the concept here. The fact that it goes forward with the reveal very early-on with the creature's appearance to them underneath the sand, and there's a lot right about this that comes off rather chilling and creepy with the way this works here. The early scenes of the remaining group getting attacked and pulled under takes that concept out into the open rather well, and there's a lot of nice work here throughout this which really puts that to fine work. It has numerous scenes of the group getting stuck in the sand and then getting pulled under by the fine tentacles poking up to attack them, and the main sequences that stand out are the first few encounters where they don't know it's there as this pops off plenty of great deaths that really let their quick-strike ability and ruthlessness in attacking them are great fun. As it later descends into a series of scenes where they try to escape their predicament that ends up failing and causing them to fall into the sand to get devoured, it does have some solid action scenes as they try a series of rather solid and surprisingly plausible escapes which really help this one along here. While there's plenty to like here, it does have a few rather stylish flaws where it's dragged down a lot more than it really should've. The film's biggest issue is the monster effects here, which is all done in CGI that looks absolutely atrocious and never once looks quite lively at all, rarely meshing with the action of the scene here as it's quite low-res during them. By doing the whole amount of creature effects and the gore effects here for the mangled bodies while they're being eaten alive by the creatures, it gives this such a low-rent feel that there's almost little to save it overall and holds this back somewhat. The other minor issue to be had here is the weak storyline here, as though it's a chilling concept it feels way too weak and gets started so quickly anyway that it comes off as being too thin and stretched out way too much as it is, where it could've either given them a longer build-up to get going or just trimmed down into a shorter time as it's got plenty of moments that could've been made into a briefer time. Otherwise this one wasn't all that bad.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Nudity and some excessive drinking.

Once in a while, a low budget horror film will surprise you. The dialogue is exceptional, the lead characters fully developed, and the story line solid. This is not such a film. I always click the "contains spoilers" but do try to avoid revealing them very often. That said, if you read the plot summary and look at the stills, you know a lot about the movie already. Scantily-clad women--and a few guys, including Dean Geyer who is a handsome enough guy but always looks like he took Nyquil an hour ago--are stuck on a beach fighting an unknown evil. One pretty girl gets topless, but the whole pretty thing and topless thing loses its appeal when losing the fight against the unknown evil. Why the topless girl could not have survived, at least for while, and instead one of the girls who retained her top could have lost the fight, I don't know. It would not have changed the plot, and while there remained plenty of cleavage, it still would not have been unpleasant. The dialogue is amazing. I think the phrase "Look at me" was probably uttered just over seven hundred times. Or at least thirty, and none of them with one of the pretty people meaning "Hey, I'm pretty. Look at me." You could turn this into a drinking game. What happens at the end? I can't tell you. Not that I won't tell you, as I don't want to give it away. I can't. Nobody can. I would be willing to bet that the writer(s) have no idea either. But it's not actually that bad. If you see it in the discount DVD bin, save your money, but it shows up for free, give it a watch. Eye candy. Unknown evil. Fat man in a trash can. Basically, this is the Citizen Kane of its time.

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.