When a crew accidentally unearths a long-lost film set from an Ancient Egyptian epic, they unleash a long-contained creature into the nearby desert and race to stop it before it completes it's mission of vengeance for being awakened.This one manages to have some rather nice moments from it. A lot of what makes the film work is that there's some nice action scenes along the way here, which manage to give the film a really fantastic pace throughout here. The opening flashback showing the ancient Egyptians conjuring up the demon on the battlefield and battling the army of soldiers before finally burying it away in the sand-storm for the actual entertainment rite, the first encounter in the pit under the sand-dunes where it reawakens and attacks in fine form and the entry way into the crypt is highly enjoyable with the suspenseful crawl through the opening into the lavish main chamber before the the attack where it lurches out of the shadows to ambush them before being driven off in a flurry of action that's really enjoyable. Even later attacks, from the guard attacks on the transport route to the great beach scenes and even the longer, involved attacks as the encounter with the seductive demon-figure and the locust attack at the mote give this one some exciting and really thrilling action along with managing to give this a perfect base for the rousing, energetic finale. From the frantic dune-buggy chase through the woods out into the desert sand, a series of great brawls at the excavation site and finally the big battle at the end with the big creature and the reanimated sculptures on the wall all coming together with a couple rather suspenseful stalking scenes and even some gory deaths thrown in. As well, it's pretty nice to know it's possible to do a horror film on Egyptian culture without going for the mummy route, as there's a lot of fun here with the creature's appearance and supernatural powers that has some really fun times here. These here give this plenty to like against the few minor flaws to this one. Although there's a lot of fun to be had from this, it's Adventure-movie feel does leave the pace and tone a little disjointed here which makes this too upbeat here without really offering too many scary moments as it whisks itself off into another big action scene, which causes the pace to be a little thrown at times. That also causes this one to really gloss over the unleashed plagues part of the curse, which really should've been much more prominent here instead of how this one handles that kind of scene. The only other flaw here is the lack of clear-cut explanations for everything that are stated as fact, which is a big annoyance. Overall, though, it's not half bad.Rated R: Graphic Violence and Language.
... View MoreWorse than the rating it has been given. This is a typical SciFi movie nowadays: bad to awful acting, a script that is poorly written, and shoddy direction. From the opening scene where DeMille is burying his set to the end, this movie is terrible. In the beginning scenes this movie has Moses (which was Charlton Heston in the DeMille film), Pharoah (Yul Brynner) and Nefretiri (Anne Baxtor) overlooking a boy burying a box in the sand. The characters that were to represent the three aforementioned icons were awful and had to resemblance to the people they were to "supposedly" be. The fact that this is in the desert away from civilization is hilarious when someone is hurt and they are all yelling for an ambulance. The screenwriter obviously is oblivious to the fact that there are no ambulances in the middle of the desert. I was sorely disappointed that Morena Baccarin decided to do a film of such low quality.
... View MoreThis must have been one of the worst movies I have ever seen.I have to disagree with another commenter, who said the special effects were okay. I found them pretty bad: it just wasn't realistic and they were so fake that it just distracted from the actual story.Maybe that distraction is the reason that I did not fully understand the story. The archaeologists are looking for "the set". They do not bother to tell what set, or what is so special about it. That also makes it unclear why they search for it in California, while the intro of the movie takes place in ancient Egypt.If you're shooting a movie that takes place in the desert, take the effort to actually go to the desert. The beginning - the ancient ceremony - looks like it was shot inside a studio instead of a desert.The action-level was constant throughout the movie, no ups and downs, no climax. It made the movie look short, and that's certainly a pro for this particular movie.
... View MoreI found "Sands of Oblivion" to be passable entertainment, which I kept watching for the joy of seeing Jayne and Inara together again. The evil entity was pretty lame....what was its goals? Take over the world, or just kill people because he/it was angry about something? The efforts of the hero and heroine were all aimed at saving themselves, which didn't seem to be worth documenting.I liked the hero, Jayne and Inara did well, the special effects were OK, there was good comic relief with the Buford character, and a really good shock early on in the show. I didn't miss the two hours I spent on this show. For those reasons, I give it a six out of ten.
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