SANDS OF OBLIVION 2007
Starz Productions
Rated: USA: TV 14
While this movie has a fascinating premise, it was made by Kevin VanHook to be an original SciFi Channel movie.
"And all that that implies!"
- Kent Mansley
I think that the most interesting thing about this movie is that I thought all of the main actors in this flick were doing far better with their careers than having to star in such a flick.
Though he has a relatively small role in the film, it stars John Castelenetta (Voice of Homer in THE SIMPSONS TREE HOUSE OF HORROR Vol. I through the present) who I thought was doing pretty well in his nearly 20 years of The Simpsons. There's Adam Baldwin (PREDATOR 2, SERENITY, THE THIRST) who I thought was doing pretty well in his re-occuring role in seemingly every TV show. And finally there's Morena Baccarin (SERENITY) who I thought was doing good enough that she didn't have to star in crap like this.
This movie, which is co-produced, co-written, and co-directed by Kevin VanHook (FROST, VOODOO MOON) once again has VanHook's apparent love for gaspingly bad cgi and make-up special effects. Believe me, there is nothing special about these special effects! Even cheapo cgi snakes? You know, there are animal wranglers that can provide real snakes! SHEESH! For whatever reason, VanHook, like Uwe Bools and Ulli Lomell, seems to think that he can make Horror movies, as he keeps making them over and over again. I can't tell, by looking at his output, whether or not he truly believes that he can make GOOD ones, but apparently he can cough up the dough or blackmail fairly good actors with some small amount of audience cache to enlist in his flicks.
SANDS OF OBLIVION involves the true story of Cecil B. DeMille, who in 1923 built a massive city set out in the desert to shoot his movie and, when he was done, left it there to rot. And speaking of rot, Kevin and crew throw in a rotting, mummified Egyptian doggie god (Anubis) to spice things up - except it doesn't. After over five minutes of a snoozy expositional prologue with narration, we go to a second prologue and are dragged through another fifteen minutes before we finally get to the actual movie. This movie has two! Two backstories in one! Over 20 minutes of exposition before the movie actually starts! Can you believe this freaking shit? Director David Flores (BOA VS PYTHON, LAKE PLACID 2) appears to have Speilbergian aspirations with his orange hues and call-attention-to-itself crane shots, but by the time the movie actually starts, I didn't care about anything going on, and nothing going on, re-ignited my interest. Also, if you are going to fill up your movie with 20 plus damn minutes of exposition, then your monster (which usually requires no explanation) better have a damn good reason for coming back to life and killing everybody besides the fact that he just suddenly appears in all of his rotting rubber and starts killing everybody. You over-explained your point about the Egyptian God Anubis and his God-like powers - so having him run around haunting an abandoned movie set don't cut it. He's a god not a ghost and, after nearly a half an hour of exposition, that damn varmint needs some solid motivation!
Though the acting is decent, because it had decent actors (except for Dan Castellaneta, who gave this movie the performance it deserved), a really bad story, ineptly written, and compounded with impotent direction, buries this crap. No matter how many years this one stays buried, good luck ever getting anyone to call this a classic! |
