The Sandman

Woof. Bad writing, bad acting, bad effects... Just bad. And the annoying little girl wasn't trying to stop anything and didn't even act afraid. She just conjured up the Sandman to kill folks on a whim and looked like she enjoyed it. So unlikable. My sons and I did get entertainment value from making fun of it, but that's it.

Then this movie might be for you.

This is one of those movies that is a fairly typical representation of what horror movies have devolved into - honestly, there appear to be more movies released in this genre than any other every year, but the majority are always rated as mediocre at best.

Typical unrealistic behavior from the characters, mediocre writing, cheap jumpscares that aren't actually scary but are very predictable, and just bad writing and acting.

I won't give any major spoilers, but let's just review the aunt's behavior in one scene. She comes home with the child, hears police across the street and with no reason why, she storms across the street, shoves her neighbors out of the way violently and rudely. She then gets confrontational with the cops all in order to just ask what happened, and then starts violently yelling at another cop because she remembers seeing him somewhere else. This behavior is borderline psychotic in the context within the movie and completely unrealistic in any way, but this isn't even the worst example of poor writing this has to offer - the child's acting is a lot worse.

This felt like a movie with a B budget, but then everything else was a solid C- at best. Sure, there are some positive reviews for it, but I suspect that those are from people that simply don't really pay attention to detail when watching movies - you know, they like to disengage the brain as if that is supposed to excuse sloppy movie making. If I have to pretend to be a moron to enjoy it, then guess what...

Uhm, firstly, why does the tagline say 'Don't fall asleep' if the story has nothing to do with falling asleep? The little girl can conjure the Sandman at any time at free will, and the Sandman also appears when she gets upset - like when Bruce Banner becomes The Hulk. This was ok-ish; there really wasn't anything special to write home about. The effects were fine and the monster was creepy-ish. Shae Smolik was very good as the little girl, that I admit. In fact, the acting in general was good. The killing does become a bit unnecessary and too much later in the film, similar to a Steven Seagall or John Woo film...

Terrible graphics and even worse acting from the child. Predictable horror made for an awful movie.

There is so much to say about The Sandman, unfortunately it's nothing good, but then absolutely nothing good at all. Almost all ingredients to make a bad movie are present, bad actors, a bad script, bad editing, bad CGI's, just everything. From the beginning you immediately know this movie has been made for television, it just oozes amateurism, but it's still watchable. the more you get to the end the more ridiculous and bad it becomes, you just start commenting on everything bad that is happening, in other words you never shut up during the entire last half hour. The main actresses, Haylie Duff and Shae Smolik, are just horrible. Haylie Duff is even bad when she just have to make a facial expression without saying anything. There are some good kids as actors but Shae Smolik isn't one of them, on the contrary she's the opposite. I would suggest those two give up on their acting career, they're still hiring at McDonalds. The scenario wasn't great from the beginning but with the extreme bad CGI's and bad acting this movie just becomes more laughable than anything else. And yes I keep in mind this is a television production, so I don't have to have too high hopes, but I've seen good tv movies before and The Sandman isn't one of them.