Life's a Beach (& then you die)

Here's the thing: any beach-set horror movie is always going to have a high bar to clear...

A high The Sand bar, if you will.

A few years ago, I was going through a hard personal time. Much like most of us in 2020, my attention span was best suited for smartphone Boggle and car commercials starring dogs. I wanted dumb entertainment, and bless the gods of streaming services that I landed on The Sand.

The Sand is an incredibly dumb horror movie about killer sand. It stars beautiful dumb people who are killed by dumb killer sand. It was all I wanted and everything I needed at the time. I still salute The Sand.

Anyhoo, onto The Beach House, writer/director Jeffrey A. Brown's feature debut now airing on Shudder.

Quick Plot: Randall, a moody college dropout, is taking his aspiring scientist girlfriend Emily to his dad's beach house for some vacation fun. Their romantic weekend hits a snag when they learn that Mitch and Jane, old pals of Randall's parents, are already there. Luckily, the two couples get along so well that a friendly dinner ends with a dessert of very strong edibles.

Jane is dying, and Mitch has been trying hard to give her one last pleasant trip. Their evening is filled with dreamy hallucinogenic night air, but their morning turns sour when Mitch goes missing and Jane is covered in lesions.

Emily and Randall try to squeeze in some beach time, but Randall is seized by stomach pain. Mitch reappears only to go for an endless swim. When Emily tries to bring him back from assumed drowning, she's stung by a gooey alien-like jellyfish.

Clearly, something isn't right in this quiet oceanside town. Jane turns near zombie-violent as Randall's sickness grows worse, leaving Emily to try to find some way to escape the encroaching poisonous fog.

Let me start by stating the obvious: The Beach House is no The Sand. It's a "better" movie in terms of its filmmaking, certainly, but also, way less fun.

So. Much. Less. Fun.

Easily, this is where I found myself checking out of Brown's film. The subtle practical effects look great and the idea of an empty beach town is haunting, but The Beach House simply climaxes too early. I'm rarely a fan of existential white wealthy college dudes, so it was tough to invest anything into Randall's fate. While I love the idea of Emily's bio-chemist education helping to guide some of the environmental mutations we're seeing, there's just so much quiet meandering as she sluggishly tries to crawl to safety that it never quite has the payoff I was hoping to find.

All of this is not to say that The Beach House is not a good movie. The haunting emptiness of its beautiful location hits a certain nerve, particularly in a pandemic-frozen world. I can't say enough how well Brown's use of Emily's science passion works towards subtly helping the audience understand what we're seeing without the film having to spoon-feed it our way. There's very good filmmaking on display here. I just wish the storytelling itself was a tad more engaging in the film's second half. 

High Points
I hate being that film writer who gets distracted by the movie she wanted rather than the one she got, but damnit, I would have gladly taken 90 minutes of Jake Weber and Maryann Nagel being fascinated by millennials. The dinner scene is one of those reminders that when you have the right actors, it can be incredibly rewarding to watch characters listen to each other

Low Points
Lead actress Liana Liberato is very good and Emily is a refreshingly smart final girl, but once Mitch and Jane are out and we still have 45 minutes of movie left, it's hard to stay engaged

Lessons Learned
Never start a dinner party before assessing your wine supply

Grad school is such bullshit

If your partner thinks your education is bullshit, it's probably time to end the relationship (whether by breakup or poison jelly fog)

Rent/Bury/Buy
I've yet to declare a Shudder original (or acquired one) a bad film. The Beach House is well-made, and shows strong promise in writer/director Jeffrey A. Brown. I wasn't overly satisfied, primarily because of its odd choices in pacing, but it's certainly worth a watch. 

Party Games

No, Truth or Dare is not an Asylum Studios adaption of the Blumhouse theatrical release of the same title. Much like meteors in 1998, sometimes a random plot point becomes all the rage in one cinematic year. From 2017-2018, that rage was, it would seem, teenage party games.

Quick Plot: In 1983, a group of college kids play a fatal game of Truth or Dare, leaving one lone survivor to live out her remaining years with an acid-scarred face but in a lovely, hard candy filled home. 

Some thirtysomething years later, a new gaggle of ridiculously attractive young people decide to spend Halloween weekend in that same former dormitory. Sure, this time there are cell phone videos, but really, a haunted party game can only evolve so much.

The rules of this version are simple: three rounds of truth or (mostly) dares, to be completed within 48 hours. Those who fail to complete the challenge die in semi-Final Destination ways so that their autopsies can be justified as bizarre accidents or creative suicides. If that doesn't sound Nightmare On Elm Street-ish enough for you, enter a very welcome Heather Lagenkamp to lend some maturity to the proceedings as the sole survivor of the last Truth or Dare massacre.

Directed by The Girl In the Photographs' Nick Simon, Truth Or Dare shares the same mean bone and black comedic sensibilities. That's mostly a good thing: by no means can this actually be called a good movie, but as someone who braved the '90s era of WB stars put through mild torment on the big screen, rougher dead teenager movies have their own certain charm. 

You can find a lot wrong in Truth or Dare -- bland characters, stupid decisions, and cockroach CGI so ridiculous that it's almost adorable -- but if you go in with the same attitude that made me the #1 fan of The Sand (yes, that's the movie about killer sand), then it's the kind of dumb fun horror movie that is weirdly watchable. This is the kind of film where a character announces her vegetarianism only to be forced to eat burnt human skin a few scenes later. 

You know what you're getting into.

High Points

Truth or Dare could have easily contained all of its action in its semi-haunted house, but its choice to break the game up and take it deeper into the real world is somewhat refreshing

Low Points

It's rare to find deep characterization in a movie like this, but it would have been nice to have some sort of character development that wasn't entirely based on who's dating whom. The movie makes a last minute attempt to fit its premise into a deeper "our punishments fit our hidden crimes," but it's so rushed and ultimately incomplete that it comes off as comically inept

Lessons Learned

If your friends refer to your partner as "what’s his face," the relationship is probably not long for this world

Baking soda has a roughly 50% acid protection rate

The power of besties involves being able to provide quick synonyms on call

Rent/Bury/Buy

Truth or Dare is not good, but hey: it's kind of fun. Queue it up on Netflix when you want to turn your brain off and enjoy watching pretty young people cut each other's fingernails. 

Don't act like you're above these things.

Sand In the Place Where You Live

On a 90+ degree day in July, the only retreat one has is burrowing into intensive air conditioning to watch a movie about people without intensive air conditioning. 

Bonus points if they're being eating by sand.

Quick Plot: A gaggle of unreasonably attractive college students party hard on a beach. The next day, a few wake up inside sturdy surfaces -- a convertible, lifeguard stand, table, and most uncomfortably in the case of poor chubby Gilbert, inside a trash can. 

Turns out, their positioning is their (temporary) salvation: some mysterious alien form has hatched underneath the beach, turning the sand into a flesh-eating monster with a burning appetite for sunburnt young people. 

With their phones unreachable and car battery dead, the survivors do what they can to outlast the cruelty of unrestrained CGI. Their horror is our pleasure in every possible way.

The Sand is not a good movie: The Sand is a great one. 

Look, sometimes your mind has been put through a marathon and you just crave something short, dumb, bright, and entertaining. You want to see attractive people in pain, fighting something as absolutely ridiculous as POSSESSED EVIL SAND. If you're lucky, maybe there will even be tentacles.

Spoiler alert: you are lucky.

Directed by Isaac Gabaeff and, according to IMDB, filmed in 12 days, The Sand is the epitome of a dumb summer horror movie. Less than 90 minutes long and never fully clothed, The Sand knows what it needs to do and does it in style. 

High Points

Folks, this is a movie where sand eats hot beach bums. What more do you want?

Low Points

I take it that blond, slightly more literate than her peers Kaylee is supposed to be our heroine, but if that's the case, shouldn't someone have excised the oddly racist insult she hurls at rival Chandra?

Lessons Learned

When dealing with a super angry, super insecure police officer, never ask to speak with his supervisor

Dying sucks, but dying with a penis drawn on your face sucks more

The reason quickie lube men make minimum wage is that oil isn't powerful enough to tear the flesh off of young people

Look! It's- 

Dean Geyer, the dude who seduced Rachel on Glee but more importantly, costarred in the amazing Lifetime film Don't Wake Mommy, something everyone should watch because Ashley Bell is a goddess and it features the weirdest Denise Crosby cameo you've never seen

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Sand is a stupid, stupid movie. But it's July, I'm tired, and a stupid movie about a man-eating beach and terrible CGI tentacles is pretty much all I need in life at this moment in time. So head to Amazon Prime and kill a few brain cells. It will do you good.