EssenceStory Well Deserved Praise

Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Brenda The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

TheLittleSongbird 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

Michael_Elliott Sand Serpents (2009) ** (out of 4) American soldiers are making their way through the Afghanistan desert when they come under fire by the Taliban. The soldiers are eventually captured, tied up and about to be executed when they hear a loud noise and before they know it all the Taliban are dead. It turns out that an earlier explosion had awaken several large worms that are underground and can respond by the noises made on land. This "Creature Feature" advertises giant worms but what we're pretty much got is a rip-off a TREMORS and the weird thing is that the horror elements are actually the least interesting thing. It's uncommon for my girlfriend to watch movies with me and especially films like this but half way through she turned to me and said this wouldn't be too bad if those worms would quit coming up. In many ways she was true because the worms just look too silly and they actually had zero to the film. If someone wants to watch giant worms then TREMORS is masterpiece of horror, monster, comedy and just all around good fun. This film here can't come close no matter how hard the filmmakers try and it's amazing that Universal didn't go after this picture due to the familiar monsters. The stuff with the soldiers dealing with being away from their families and the way they maneuver through their operators were actually the most entertaining thing in the film. I thought there was some nice suspense early in the film when they're walking through the desert just waiting for their targets to come up. One of the soldiers is having a breakdown from not seeing his family and another is hiding some deep secrets. This drama works a lot better than the horror elements and that's weird to say because in most of these monster movies it's the boring melodrama that kills things. The performances aren't too bad with Jason Gedrick leading the way. The special effects are extremely cheap and really don't add anything. I think fans of the genre will probably want to check it out if they must see everything out there but others should just rent TREMORS.

xenomorph44 OK, I barely saw any of this movie, but from what I did see, it was a complete knock off of Tremors! They hunt by sound? No, Graboids do that, not sand serpents. Again, I didn't see this movie completely, only about 10-20 minutes scattered around, but it just lacked the charm that the Tremors movies and TV show have. I love all four Tremors movies and the TV show, and am really hoping Tremors: The Thunder From Down Under comes out. When seeing this I felt betrayed by SciFi (SyFy). They used to show the Tremors movies all the time on SciFi channel. They even had the TV series, until they canceled it after half a season. Only to come out with this six years later! I would have been much happier if they just made Tremors 5 for TV then released it on DVD. Well, at least I have all four movies and taped every episode of the TV series. Oh, that's another thing. They never released the Tremors TV series on DVD. Great job, guys! Just leave behind what the people want and keep making more movies like Sand Serpents! What's next? Probably a sequel, Land Serpents, then Air Serpents, followed by a TV show called Nothing To Do With Serpents, then getting a prequel Baby-turned-Sand Serpents. Plus, what's a giant worm movie without Michael Gross playing Burt Gummer (or a prequel with one of his relatives)?

scottwallvashon It is interesting how they set these movies in current war zones so that they can double as propaganda. When George Bush was president, these types of movies were typically anti Iraq War propaganda. Now that Barack Obama is president, I guess they are going to be pro Afghanistan War propaganda. You have to watch to understand.Interestingly, the acting in this film is not awful. I guess you get better actors when you are making a pro Democrat propaganda film. The special effects are not awful either.But that is pretty much it. The acting is not awful and the special effects are not awful. Once you get past that, it is pretty much just monsters and mayhem. There's a limit to what you can do with monsters, mayhem, and pro Democrat propaganda. There is nothing new about giant worms.