[yasr_overall_rating]
A little girl with formidable powers imagines into existence the Sandman, a terrible monster from her nightmares that brings harm to anyone who wants to hurt her.
On the cover of “The Sandman” DVD, it exclaims, in large, bold lettering, “Executive Produced by Stan Lee.” For those not familiar with Marvel and all of its superhero characters, this will mean nothing to them but to those who do know of him, it might come as a bit of a surprise. After all, “The Sandman” is a horror film, not a superhero movie but even with the great Mr. Lee’s name attached to this project, it does not make it any better. In fact, the film is so bad, that if I were Mr. Lee, I would have removed my name from the credits before its release date. I’m just glad he didn’t appear in his usual cameo.
The story centers around a young girl named Madison (Shae Smolik), who just recently lost her father under mysterious circumstances. When her Aunt Claire (Haylie Duff) agrees to take care of her since her brother’s untimely demise, things start out a little awkwardly as the two don’t really know each other but they quickly bond. However, their happiness is short-lived when strange occurrences begin to happen to Claire’s neighbors and her boyfriend Wyatt (Shaun Sipos) disappears. When Claire questions Madison, she tells her that she has the ability to bring characters from storybooks to life and in this particular case, it is a character known as the Sandman, who can turn people to dust and make them disintegrate by simply touching them. When Valentine (Tobin Bell), a scientist that has been studying cases similar to Madison, takes both women hostage, his actions force Madison to unleash the Sandman with powers unlike anything that has ever been seen before.
While the premise for “The Sandman” is not wholly original, it is somewhat intriguing. The fact that a young girl can bring to life characters from books and monsters from her nightmares, could make for a very watchable feature, if only it had landed in the hands of a capable filmmaker. Here, director Peter Sullivan obviously never heard of Roger Corman’s very famous quote, “Never show your monster in the daylight.” As the movie progresses, the Sandman begins appearing every few minutes and for a horror film, that is a big no-no. Keeping your monster hidden in the shadows as much as possible makes the viewing experience overall, more terrifying. When you see the monster frequently, and sometimes during the day, it sort of defeats the whole purpose of calling it a “horror movie.” Haylie Duff and Tobin Bell do their best with what they have but Shae Smolik, as the young Madison, appears to be struggling with her scenes. Either she’s not a very good actress, or she wasn’t given good direction and based on my having seen the entire film, I would likely go with the latter.
Now available on DVD
