Audience Member
The filmmakers tried. The Sandman has a very interesting premise, but in the end it is just a ripoff of Nightmare on Elm Street. If you sleep, you die.
Oh and the Sandman looks like a 6 foot tall Jawa with skeletal hands.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
02/27/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The Sandman, a movie that has nothing to do with the wrestler or the graphic novel of the same name!
Story: A dream demon named the Sandman is killing people in their sleep. It's not a bad concept, it worked for Freddy, so it could work here. There is something inherently scary about sleep, as you are vulnerable and not completely guaranteed to wake again in the morning. The overall narrative isn't bad. The writing, however, is beyond bad. I suspect that the writer came from a background in prose, as everything gets way over explained instead of relying on the visuals to tell the story. D
Acting: The acting is bad, but I think it could have been salvageable in the hands of a better writer/director/editor. I think the actors must be from live theater backgrounds, as they are way, way overacting. It's painful to watch, especially the Viet Nam veteran, the old lady that's obsessed with toys, and the walking 90's stereotype ?cool? surfer-ish kid. Basically, all the actors should have been told to turn it down a few degrees and the script should have given them less monologues and more visual stuff to do to advance the story. D
Visuals: Well, the Sandman man looks like a giant Jawa from Star Wars mixed with one of the creatures in John Carpenter's The Fog. The main message is that it looks cheap, but passable as long as it stays in the shadows and the audience never gets a good look at him. Unfortunately, this is not the case as we get to see every glorious inch of him. The end result is not good. D
Direction: This director knows what a wide shot is. That's about it. He also doesn't seem to be aware that he can use takes that are less than ten minutes long. Again, movies are not live theater. The camera can get closer to the actor, and we don't have to hover on one angle for eternity. Also, the director and/or the editor should have trimmed each scene down to the point where the message was delivered and moved on. The direction is the big failure in this movie, because the script and the acting, while they weren't good, they could have been fixed by a competent director. F! F! F!!!
Overall: I can't really recommend this movie to anyone except for those who enjoy watching bad movies simply to poke fun at them. There was potential here, and I hope the writer/director learned the right lessons from his failing here, but skip this movie. If you see it for sale, run, don't walk. F
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Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
Full Review
Audience Member
A romance novelist (Richards) suffering from insomnia discovers that a monstrous creature is killing his neighbors in their sleep. Will he find a way to stop before he or his girlfreind (Gutowski) become its next victims?
[center][img]http://www.geocities.com/nuelow/movsandman.jpg[/img]
[i]The pulp magazine-style DVD cover image for "[URL=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000GALHP6?ie=UTF8&tag=stevemillesdo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000GALHP6]The Sandman[/URL]" is one of the best things about the film.[/i][/center]
"The Sandman" is a low-budget horror film that has a cool idea at its core but it is one that ineptly implemented from a writing and filmmaking point of view.
First of all, the script is sloppily written, with a major extraneous character that comes and goes throughout the film and whose presence ends up not adding anything to the film but a few mild chuckles and running-time. There's also a redundant delivery of information about the Sandman, information that's delivered primarily for the viewers' benefit but which we have to sit through twice, with one of the instances being particularly badly motivated and unnecessary. (Our hero, Gary, needs to know the legend of the Sandman and the source he gains it from makes a lot of sense--an unhinged Vietnam veteran played for laughs by James Viront who has confronted the creature in the past--but his girlfriend gets the same information and she gets it out of left field in a badly motivated scene.)
Second, the film is badly staged and poorly acted from beginning to end. Only the actors playing the comic relief characters do a decent job (with Lipko and Walsh being the best), while those called upon to drive the horror aspect of the film are very unconvincing in their parts. It's not entirely the fault of A.J. Richards and Rita Gutowski (who play Gary and his love interest respectively), as they are working with some badly written dialogue and poorly edited and filmed scenes. Part of the lack of drama arises from pauses in action or dialogue that could have been fixed with tighter editing, although nothing but additiinal drafts of the script or better filmmaking could have improved the other problems.
For every cool coment in the film, there is a botched one. For example, when Gary tries to shoot the Sandman with a gun, he strikes back with his magical scicle, destroying the gun in a shower of sparks, but then the fight loses momentum when Gary picks up a baseball bat in a badly staged scene where the editing gives you the sense that the Sandman is politely waiting for him to arm himself again instead of pressing the attack.
"The Sandman" is one of those low-budget horror films that had me wishing someone with iether more money or more skil would remake (and tighten the script in the process), because there's an excellent fantasy/horror movie that didn't quite make it to the screen with this version. (I've got another of writer/producer/director J.R. Bookwalter's films in my Stack of Stuff that actually did get the remake treatment; both Bookwaler's original film and the remake are on the same DVD, and I'm looking forward to reviewing them side-by-side. He's obviously got good ideas, but is either lacking the talent or the experience to properly bring them forward.)
[URL=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000GALHP6?ie=UTF8&tag=stevemillesdo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000GALHP6]The Sandman[/URL]
Starring: A.J. Richards, Terry J. Lipko, Rita Gutowski, James Viront and Matthew Jason Walsh
Director: J.R. Bookwalter
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
01/18/23
Full Review
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