The Sand (aka Blood Sand) is a 2015 horror movie. A group of college friends on spring break have a wild beach party, during which a strange egg-like object is dredged up out of the surf. The next morning, eight of them wake up to discover that everyone else camping out on the beach has disappeared, and there's something under the sand that is coming after them next...
This movie contains examples of:
- Artistic License – Biology: The monster grows so quickly-from the size of a basketball to the size of a beach dock inside 8 hours- that it would cook itself to death. No wonder it glows. Slightly more excusable if, like the jellyfish it resembles, its bulk is mostly water that it absorbed from the damp sand, rather than organic tissue.
- Asshole Victim: Beach Patrol Alex, and the kids who shoved Gilbert into a barrel and drew a penis on his face.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Half of Vance’s face is brutally melted off, Beach Patrol Alex’s arm is eaten, Jonah gets a wound on his stomach that spurts pus, and blood pours out of Gilbert’s mouth while the creature is attacking him, but Ronnie is simply sucked into the sand and disappears and we don’t even see Marsha being eaten. The closest thing to gore done to a female character is Ronnie’s fingers when pulled out of the trunk.
- Bittersweet Ending: Kaylee manages to drive the creature off by setting one of its tentacles on fire, but Jonah dies from the stomach wound he received earlier, leaving her and Chanda the only survivors of the entire ordeal. Kaylee also didn't kill the creature, she only wounded it. It's still alive, revealed to be a giant jellyfish, and last seen swimming towards the Santa Monica Pier...
- Bioluminescence Is Cool: The monster glows a bright blue in the dark.
- Bloodless Carnage: Zigzagged. Sometimes the monster devours people very messily, other times you only see them get sucked into the sand and disappear.
- Body Horror: The welts on Jonah's belly from being stung get worse every time they're shown, and start messily rupturing as the poison attacks his tissues.
- Bottle Episode: The whole film takes place on one small section of a deserted beach, due to the fact that the characters can't cross the sand to escape somewhere else.
- Butt-Monkey: Gilbert is shown passed out at the party in the beginning and his friends draw a penis on his face in marker. He wakes up wedged in a trash barrel on the beach, which he can't escape from due to the monster in the sand and spends the whole movie in there. He is understandably displeased throughout the film.
- Chekhov's Gun: The book of matches that Kaylee picks up in the lifeguard shack at the beginning of the film. Subverted with the pepper spray, which proves useless after the first time it gets used.
- Combat Tentacles: The monster reveals itself to have these in the climax.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Getting dissolved alive by a jellyfish monster underneath the sand. Sometimes slowly.
- Death by Cameo: Jamie Kennedy shows up as an asshole beach ranger just long enough to get eaten.
- Desperate Object Catch: Any time the characters toss something helpful - sunblock, canned drinks, hot dogs - to one another.
- Developing Doomed Characters: The establishing shots of everyone having fun at the party and their frequent breaks to discuss their personal relationships and whatnot during the film work to this effect.
- Eldritch Abomination: The monster is a creature that is clearly not from this world; its a gigantic mass of acidic tentacles, acidic slime, teeth and tentacles with teeth coated in acidic slime that will happily feed on anyone and everyone it can sense with its touch; the ending shot reveals that the monster is at least the size of a beach pier, which is extra terrifying since the thing started around the size of a beachball and is only a day old!
- Eye Scream: Happens very graphically to Vance after he falls face-down onto the sand.
- Final Girl: Kaylee seems to have the makings of one, as the pragmatic but emotional "good girl". She does live, but she isn't the only survivor; her romantic rival Chanda lives too.
- Fingore: Ronnie gets her fingers crushed in the trunk of Mitch's car when she and Chanda attempt to open it without leaving the safety of the car to reach their cell phones. She spends a good few hours trapped like that and her hand is quite bloodied when she is finally freed.
- Found Footage: The opening splices cell phone video of the Wild Teen Party on the beach with long cinematic shots of the beach the next morning. The rest of the film is shot normally.
- Hope Spot: One when Jonah reaches the safe area of the beach where the monster doesn't extend before it's revealed that he was seriously injured and one when Ronnie falls on the sand and appears to be okay before the monster sucks her down.
- Hypocritical Humor: When Marsha wakes topless:
- Chanda: Marsha, I can see your nipples.
Jonah: I can see them.
Chanda: Don’t look at her nipples!
- Kill It with Fire: What Kaylee attempts when the monster finally shows itself during the climax. It succeeds in driving the monster away, but as shown at the end it's still alive and hungry.
- Life Saving Misfortune: Gilbert being pranked by being stuffed into a barrel does keep the sand from getting at him, when otherwise he would have just been lying passed out on the beach and quickly consumed. Unfortunately the barrel was too small for him, and caused him to bleed, which ends up attracting the monster's attention, ultimately leading to his death.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The opening establishes that Mitch confiscated everyone's cell phones and locked them in the trunk of his car to prevent footage of their excessive partying from ending up online and getting them in trouble. It leaves him and his friends without a means of calling for help when they're trapped by the monster.
- Noodle Incident: When Beach Patrol Alex sees Gilbert stuck in the barrel, he says this:Beach Patrol Alex: This is embarrassing. I mean, man, I'm telling you, I've been on the Beach Patrol twenty-three years of my life. This is fucking way worse than the lady with a horseshoe crab up her ass.
- Nothing Is Scarier. It isn’t until the end that we actually see the monster. We also don’t actually see Marsha, the beach ranger, Ronnie, or Gilbert die after being sucked into the sand.
- Only Sane Man: Gilbert and Ronnie show a lot of frustration about the others Skewed Priorities.
- Police Are Useless: The beach ranger who arrives responds to the college kids begging him to call for help by mocking them, accusing them of being on drugs, and threatening to pepper spray Kaylee if she doesn't leave the lifeguard shack. You don't feel too bad for him when Kaylee steals the pepper spray and leaves him to die.
- Sex Signals Death: Downplayed. Marsha, the girl who flashes the camera in the beginning and is seen sleeping topless the next morning, is the first to die.
- Skewed Priorities: The characters stop several times to argue about the romantic entanglements between Jonah, Kaylee, Chanda, and Mitch, despite the danger they're in. This directly results in Jonah getting mortally wounded when he stops to argue with Kaylee about their breakup, while he should be climbing to safety. Lampshaded when Ronnie finally snaps at Kaylee and Chanda to stop their bickering and focus on surviving.
- Sleep Cute: Final girls, Kaylee and Chanda sleep huddled together until the next morning after the creature is defeated.
- The End... Or Is It?: Kaylee drives the monster away by setting it on fire, but it is seen swimming towards another beach in the final shot.
- Uncertain Doom: Heather (the girl filming the Found Footage) and various other party-goers who are gone come morning. While it's made clear that many of them were Killed Offscreen, some may have just gone home before people started getting attacked through the sand.
- Weaksauce Weakness: The human-dissolving monster under the sand can be thwarted by simply wearing sturdy shoes, not that it matters to the one character who does so. It can also be driven off by pepper spray. It also doesn't like fire or anything related to fire (like ashes).
- What Did I Do Last Night?: Kaylee and Jonah (who are dating) are chagrined when they both wake up next to someone else the morning after the party.
