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Such a frustrating disappointment

How sad is this?

A Major Disappointment

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Jason Gedrick and a small group of US Army Soldiers are stranded in the remote Afghan desert. But it ain't the Taliban that's worrying them, it's these giant refugees from Tremors. In fact the big worms prove to be an ally of sorts by doing better against the Taliban than themselves but battling these enemies is something not covered in their training. Sand Serpents mix 2 things in one (a war film and a monster film) and the end result is pretty bad. The acting is mediocre, the special effects are terrible and the overall plot moves slower than death. Overall a waste of time and money. (3/10)

I was rather dubious of seeing Sand Serpents. The premise seemed hokey but somewhat interesting, but what turned me off was that it was airing on the SyFy channel who to me seem to have a notoriety for showing and making films that range from just tolerable to bottom-of-the-barrel quality.Luckily for Sand Serpents, it is one of the more tolerable efforts to air on the SyFy channel. I wouldn't go as far to say it was good, it's not, but it was entertaining in a way. Apart from the special effects, the production values are a step above what I usually see on SyFy, with better than expected photography and editing and the scenery/settings is somewhat striking. The acting is also much better than anticipated with the two leads quite good, the sound effects are more authentic and incorporated better than they can be and effort is done into developing the characters and making them likable. The scenes with the monsters of the title of the film are entertaining and done with a decent amount of build-up and suspense, again a big improvement, but there could have been more of it.Production-values wise though, what cheapens Sand Serpents are the effects. I've seen much worse, but some of the effects do look fake and crude. The story didn't gel for me either, interesting but also rather hokey. I liked the idea of merging war drama and monsters, but the execution of the idea didn't come off as successful. The scenes with the monsters are some of the better scenes of the film, but the war drama scenes are clichéd and pedestrian in my opinion. The script is often laughable, with dialogue that does come across as unintentionally funny, the music has its moments but can be over-bearing and predictable and the direction while not a complete hack job was rather unimpressive. There is also one very irritating character, but he does get killed off in an ideal way in one of the more fulfilling scenes of the movie, so that didn't harm the film as much.Overall, uneven and silly, but it did have some entertaining moments, so I can't be too overly hard on it. Besides, I could have been watching another Titanic II, 2010:Moby Dick, Dinocroc vs. Supergator, The Apocalypse and Alien vs.Hunter, which was what I was prepared for, in short a movie so bad you contemplate suicide, however while not great by all means it was actually quite tolerable. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Sand Serpents is set in the remote Afghan desert where Lieutenant Richard Stanley (Jason Gedrick) & his small troop of marines are escorting engineer Captain Jan Henle (Tamara Hope) to a sapphire mine to assess whether it's still operational & worth taking control of, while at the seemingly abandoned mine the marines are attacked by hostile Taliban soldiers & are taken hostage. Awaiting their fate the marines are surprised to find everything go very quiet & the Taliban soldiers to have completely disappeared, the marines soon discover that the fighting & explosions above ground have woken giant 100 foot long ancient prehistoric worm like monsters that like to eat people. Stranded in the Afgahn desert at the mercy of the Taliban & giant mutant worms the marines have to figure out a way to get to safety...This American & Canadian co-production was directed by Jeff Renfroe & is yet another original Sy-Fy Channel creature feature that could have been great but ends up falling way short, Sand Serpents is a sort of mixture of Tremors (1990) with it's huge underground mutant people eating worms & Black Hawk Down (2001) as a group of marines are stranded at the mercy of the Taliban & left to fend for themselves until help arrives. I know those two films are world's apart & it's difficult to imagine such a mix but here it is, it's called Sand Serpents & it's not every good. As expected little or no explanation for the mutant worms are given & oddly the script actually spends more time on the conflict between the US marines & the Taliban & relegates the Sand Serpents to a sub-plot, the Sand Serpents are nothing more than one more obstacle to overcome in order to escape & don't really get much screen time or do anything other than cause the ground the rumble a lot & eat the occasional soldier. The war aspect of the script is hardly great either, although more time is spent on it the usual broad clichés are brought up like countering the idea that Afghanistan should just be nuked without remorse or the assumption that every Afghan is a terrorist. There are no deep political or social statements here, the character's are flat & you don't care who lives or dies & in fact at the end when the Lieutenant sacrifices his own life for no apparent reason (the whole flag waving patriotic heroism of the US & it's soldiers is the clear message) I couldn't have cared less. At a little under 90 minutes long Sand Serpents does drag at times although the pace isn't too bad, I think focusing on the Afghan war aspects & somewhat ignoring the giant mutant worm monsters was a mistake. Then again if I'm being cynical less giant mutant worm monsters equals less expensive CGI computer effects to pay for...The film looks nice enough as far as Sy-Fy Channel flicks go. The desert looks like, well, a desert I suppose & the marines uniforms & weapons look authentic enough too. As already mentioned the Sand Serpents themselves are somewhat neglected, all they ever do is pop their heads out of the ground & sort of sway around a bit. As it was made for television don't expect any blood or gore as there isn't any.With a supposed budget of about $1,800,000 & filmed entirely in Romania the production values are decent, the special effects are alright actually & it's quite well made for a film of it's type. The acting is OK from a cast of people I have never seen or heard of before.Sand Serpents is not that great, it's better than many original Sy-Fy Channel creature features but that ain't saying much, an awkward mix of monster & war film that doesn't quite come together as it has too much clichéd war drama & not enough giant mutant worm action. Hard to recommend.

Contains some very general spoilers.When watching news reports about todays combat troops on the front lines, two of the things that come to mind are how shockingly young all of the soldiers are, and how shockingly short all of their haircuts are. In SAND SERPENTS, the cast looks like it was plucked from a Green Day mosh pit. These actors are about as solder-like as my left foot, and my left foot is not all that military. The actors are too old and they don't look or act like elite special forces military.Here is the 3% fun in SAND SERPENTS... it is kind of fun debating with fellow viewers whether the sand worms in SAND SERPENTS are copied from the sand worms in TREMORS or are instead copied from the sand worms in DUNE. The rest of the movie experience is bad in a dull sort of way.SAND SERPENTS has pretty good pacing, but other than that it is difficult to find good things to say. There are better monster movies out there where the cast dies one person at a time. And there are much better sand worm movies out there, so please watch one of those.