By Ben Bussey
Getting a bunch of pretty young people, dropping them in a single location and killing them off one by one has long been the standard for low-budget horror. Should you so happen to make that single location somewhere interesting and unusual, and make the deaths similarly distinctive, then you just might be on to a winner. We could literally spend hours reeling off the number of movies which hinge on that same essential format, but watching new horror movie The Sand I’m most reminded (and I doubt I’m alone in this) of The Raft, perhaps the most memorable story from anthology movie Creepshow 2, in which a bunch of teens find themselves trapped on a narrow raft in the middle of a lake when a tar-like amorphous mass with a taste for human flesh surfaces in the water. The Sand plays out along much the same lines at feature length, but this time they’re on a beach the morning after a riotous party, spread between a lifeguard station, a parked car and, for one unfortunate sod, stuck in a metal barrel. Coming to boasting killer hangovers, one of their number – a cute topless girl (tick your first box) – staggers down to the sand from her sleeping position on a bench, and promptly finds herself unable to move. A macho dude rushes off to help, lands face down – and also cannot move. Moments later, they’re both torn to pieces and pulled down into the sand by some unseen monster beneath the surface. And so our survivors must try to figure out a way to get to safety without ever touching the ground (echoes of Tremors).
Going in, The Sand feels very much like one of those movies which can go either way. Opening found footage style with snippets of cameraphone footage from the night before’s beach party – before, rather unconvincingly, all and sundry agree to put their phones in a bag, which come the morning will be left conveniently out of reach (really, has any modern technological advance proved a greater thorn in the side of horror movies than mobile communication?) – the stage initially seems set for a trashy, beer-swilling, bikini-clad spectacle in a Piranha 3D style. However, once things progress it becomes clear that director Isaac Gabaeff and writers Alex Greenfield and Ben Powell are less interested in presenting a horrific critique on Spring Break culture than exploring a classic monster movie survivalist set-up. The results, while far from earth-shattering, are for the most part reasonably entertaining, even if they do feel a bit thinly stretched for a full-length 85 minute movie.
A big plus point is the creature itself. It’s sort of shame (though understandable) that the poster art gives away the monster’s ultimate appearance in the final scenes, as it’s built up in a very interesting way. Happily, this film dispenses with the obligatory science nerd character who gets to explain everything away; instead, our protagonists are all equally clueless, and come to figure out the unseen enemy’s MO through observation and (for the less fortunate ones) personal experience. The manner in which it kills is both agreeably gruesome and imaginative, and although there’s the now sadly commonplace over-reliance on CGI where practical FX could have done the job, the gore gags are still pretty well done; likewise, the CG creature FX occasionally give away what a low budget production this must have been, but once those Lovecraftian tentacles come bursting out in the moonlit climax, it all looks pretty impressive.
The cast, however, isn’t quite so endearing, and this is an issue given that, for the most part, this is a movie centred on people sitting in one place talking. Brooke Butler was a good choice for the immediately obvious final girl, and I suppose it’s testament to her acting ability that I didn’t recognise her from her diametrically opposite role in All Cheerleaders Die, despite the fact that, as in that earlier film, she spends pretty much the duration wearing tiny shorts and an even tinier top. Beyond her, however, the picture-perfect pretty ensemble is largely unlikeable and unrelatable, and particular sympathy has to be given to Cleo Berry who gets laboured both with both the stereotypical black guy and fat guy jokes as the one of their number stuck in a barrel. However, these performances all come off as masterful by comparison with the painfully misjudged cameo from Scream’s Jamie Kennedy, which belongs in a totally different film (which would also be totally unfunny).
Still, all things considered The Sand is a perfectly passable evening’s entertainment. It’s got some good gore, a cool monster, and lots of pretty people sitting around in swimwear, so you can’t really go too far wrong. Whether you’ll remember anything about it two days later or ever have any desire to revisit it is another matter.
The Sand is one of the first titles being released to VOD in the UK via the new FrightFest Presents platform, from 19th October.