Sands of Oblivion

source: Sands of Oblivion

Moviecut—Sands of Oblivion

It's an endearing film, nostalgia is good, as long as Richar Kind is acting. I congratulate the direction and the Script team with such an excellent job. And that's where the excellent actress, Angel Princess, began to climb the acting ladder.

Good plot, although it fizzles out before the end. Enjoyable features. Overall, it was interesting & entertaining.

Sands of Oblivion is not a bad movie, it's just that it is not a particularly good one either. It did have potential to be though, with one of the best ideas SyFy ever had. The acting while not great is pretty decent, the dune buggy chase is exciting, the film is photographed quite nicely in more places than not and there is some striking scenery. However, the special effects are uneven, none of them are as bad as the ones(for example) for Titanic II but while some are serviceable, others are on the cheap side. The script is rather lazy and never consistent in tone, the story lacks thrills, a genuine sense of adventure and suspense for a movie typical of this genre and is never sure of what it wants to be and the characters are underdeveloped and clichéd(not just genre clichés but SyFy clichés too). In conclusion, lacklustre, had a wonderful idea and started off promisingly but fizzled out. 4/10 Bethany Cox

When a crew accidentally unearths a long-lost film set from an Ancient Egyptian epic, they unleash a long-contained creature into the nearby desert and race to stop it before it completes it's mission of vengeance for being awakened. This one manages to have some rather nice moments from it. A lot of what makes the film work is that there's some nice action scenes along the way here, which manage to give the film a really fantastic pace throughout here. The opening flashback showing the ancient Egyptians conjuring up the demon on the battlefield and battling the army of soldiers before finally burying it away in the sand-storm for the actual entertainment rite, the first encounter in the pit under the sand-dunes where it reawakens and attacks in fine form and the entry way into the crypt is highly enjoyable with the suspenseful crawl through the opening into the lavish main chamber before the the attack where it lurches out of the shadows to ambush them before being driven off in a flurry of action that's really enjoyable. Even later attacks, from the guard attacks on the transport route to the great beach scenes and even the longer, involved attacks as the encounter with the seductive demon-figure and the locust attack at the mote give this one some exciting and really thrilling action along with managing to give this a perfect base for the rousing, energetic finale. From the frantic dune-buggy chase through the woods out into the desert sand, a series of great brawls at the excavation site and finally the big battle at the end with the big creature and the reanimated sculptures on the wall all coming together with a couple rather suspenseful stalking scenes and even some gory deaths thrown in. As well, it's pretty nice to know it's possible to do a horror film on Egyptian culture without going for the mummy route, as there's a lot of fun here with the creature's appearance and supernatural powers that has some really fun times here. These here give this plenty to like against the few minor flaws to this one. Although there's a lot of fun to be had from this, it's Adventure-movie feel does leave the pace and tone a little disjointed here which makes this too upbeat here without really offering too many scary moments as it whisks itself off into another big action scene, which causes the pace to be a little thrown at times. That also causes this one to really gloss over the unleashed plagues part of the curse, which really should've been much more prominent here instead of how this one handles that kind of scene. The only other flaw here is the lack of clear-cut explanations for everything that are stated as fact, which is a big annoyance. Overall, though, it's not half bad. Rated R: Graphic Violence and Language.

When I saw this movie in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart I really didn't expect much. However, they did have a couple of actors from Firefly/Serenity and one from Supernatural. Of course George Kennedy is an excellent actor. So, there's no complaint about the acting. The story is pretty good (a movie-set from early 1900s is being rediscovered for relocation before the area it is located in is flooded, however the artifacts are genuine Egyptian artifacts and one allows the release of an ancient Egyptian God. Let the blood flow.) My main beef with this movie is the same old beef people have had about low budget productions since they began filming them. The big monster is once again a guy in a cheesy suit. Of course, people like me who grew up on Dr Who and Star Trek are used to the actor in the cheesy suit syndrome, however I had thought that in the 21st century we would be seeing more cheesy computer effects than cheesy monster suits. This monster suit is as bad as any I have seen. Complete with the stiff lower jaw that moves up and down like, well like a bad movie monster suit. For producers who might per chance be reading this, please spend less money on hotels (you can get tents cheaper), food (I hear snake meat tastes like chicken) and bottled water (hey, just cause the water in the bucket is brown doesn't mean you can't drink it)and put the savings into making your monster look more real. A more realistic monster in this movie would have made the entire production better. Hell, just making the monster headpiece more articulate would have vastly improved the movie. So, if you're the type of person who can enjoy a play with bad effects, then maybe the monster suit won't bother you much and you can enjoy the rest of the movie. I got quite a laugh out of it myself, especially when the monster bit off George Kennedy's arm. It looked like someone had his arm in a stuffed crocodile's jaw, very funny stuff. Of course, I don't think it was MEANT to be funny. The rest of the movie was OK. Once again, for people saying this is the worst movie, or second worse movie they've ever seen, I can only say they haven't seen very many movies. I can pull out 30 or 40 movies from my collection of over 500 that are WAY worse than this movie. To put it into perspective, one day when I'm bored I might pull this DVD out and watch this movie again.

Ancient Egyptian mythology, archaeologists, Iraq War Veterans, various weapons, and dune buggies. Sounds like a recipe for a cool Indiana Jones movie, right? Negative. 15 minutes in, I was wondering how I was going to make it through the rest of this movie. First off, the monster was ridiculous, but not even in a campy, funny way. The script was unnatural, cliché, and generally awful. The story/plot, or what tried to pass for one, was terrible, with no real set up for the puzzle that ultimately needed to be solved to beat the monster. While this movie tried to be exciting by employing military weapons and characters, the stunts and fight scenes involving them were simple and fake-looking. Further, the movie tried to seem knowledgeable about the military by having Webster indignantly explain to Baccarin the difference between a "jarhead" and a "soldier," but in the same breath, the former logistics soldier referred to himself as a "grunt," which is not an Army-specific term, but instead refers to infantrymen, which he was not. The only bright spots in this film were the dune buggy stunts, the Ancient Egypt scene in the beginning, a small cameo by Richard Kind, and a funny- while-convincing performance by Charles Lister as weirdo Vet-turned-gun- runner Buford. You could watch this for free at IMDb through Hulu, but I think it's better suited for tying down your worst enemy Clockwork- Orange-style and making him/her watch it.

I've been half-asssedly reviewing all the SyFy movies I've been watching, and every once in a while I find real gold- Sands of Oblivion had a great, cheesy story, some goofy characters (although not quite on scale with "Sand Sharks" band of loons), the occasional bit of inspired dialogue amidst plenty of throw-away material. But MORE importantly, the "action" was hilarious, and had some very surreal gore that unless you're giving the movie proper attention to, you're liable to miss. Yea, it's a stupid movie. One that you'll never see outside of the SyFy channel, and maybe never again afterwards. But for those "Wtf just happened" moments, some goofy violence, increasingly poor decisions and that B movie vibe, SandsofOblivion will kill 2 hours, AND give you some attractive people to root for.

Three and a half stars! Unbelievable. I like and respect the cast, which is why I sat through it, but this is one of those films that should have been aborted at script level. Doesn't make any sense, excessively bloody (for no reason), very poor special effects, insulting mangulation of Egyptian religion and a monster that can't seem to decide if it's a mummy or a god and keeps repeating its one line (Uraghah) ad nausea-um. The last scene says it all, with Loony-Toons Ancient Egyptian soldiers pealing off ruin walls like paper cut-outs and, apparently, equally durable. The greatest bad movie sin: neither funny nor entertaining. If the scale extended to negative stars, I'd have given it -10 with lots of exclamation points. Clicked spoiler box to avoid being blacklisted and yes, mangulation is not a real word, yet. Update, 9-7-13. Just tripped over it again on SyFy and will revise my initial review: you should watch it at least once just to watch the cast doing a heroic job of trying to carry the show. Otherwise, it's worse than I remember. Absolutely nothing, from plot to dialog, makes any sense. Just one scene, George Kennedy standing on a sandy sand dune at a beach, using a walker, says it all. Except for the next scene, where a hole opens up beneath him and he winds up hanging upside down looking at a statue of Anubis wiggling its ears. In a 'chamber' with no visible source of light. A walker on an excessively sandy, like Sahara sandy, beach (and where's the ocean?) And watching Anubis wiggling it's ears in a totally darker than midnight room? No wonder Kennedy's character drops dead immediately thereafter (who do I have to F... to get out of this movie?) My first time around I must of been spending so much time trying to keep my jaw from dropping that I missed how the performances verge just on the edge of camp. Am example - the Primary (leader of the dig) is focusing on the day's finds (tight center frame) when she's attacked by that same Anubis, cutting to the silhouette of her tent as she's being strangled - an obvious reference to Boris Karloff's Mummy and reminiscent of a Betty Boop cartoon. (And how come monsters never seem to think of something else to do with sexy victims?) Oddly, I'm finding those performances engaging, no matter how bad the dialog. Like watching people talking gibberish (or French) totally seriously.