Reviews & Ratings for
Sands of Oblivion (TV) More at IMDbPro »

3 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Ugarahu, 6 December 2010

Author: kols from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Three and a half stars! Unbelievable.

I like and respect the cast, which is why I sat through it, but this is one of those films that should have been aborted at script level. Doesn't make any sense, excessively bloody (for no reason), very poor special effects, insulting mangulation of Egyptian religion and a monster that can't seem to decide if it's a mummy or a god and keeps repeating its one line (Uraghah) ad nausea-um.

The last scene says it all, with Loony-Toons Ancient Egyptian soldiers pealing off ruin walls like paper cut-outs and, apparently, equally durable.

The greatest bad movie sin: neither funny nor entertaining.

If the scale extended to negative stars, I'd have given it -10 with lots of exclamation points.

Clicked spoiler box to avoid being blacklisted and yes, mangulation is not a real word, yet.

A wonderful idea that sadly fizzles out, 6 May 2012

Author: TheLittleSongbird from United Kingdom

Sands of Oblivion is not a bad movie, it's just that it is not a particularly good one either. It did have potential to be though, with one of the best ideas SyFy ever had. The acting while not great is pretty decent, the dune buggy chase is exciting, the film is photographed quite nicely in more places than not and there is some striking scenery. However, the special effects are uneven, none of them are as bad as the ones(for example) for Titanic II but while some are serviceable, others are on the cheap side. The script is rather lazy and never consistent in tone, the story lacks thrills, a genuine sense of adventure and suspense for a movie typical of this genre and is never sure of what it wants to be and the characters are underdeveloped and clichéd(not just genre clichés but SyFy clichés too). In conclusion, lacklustre, had a wonderful idea and started off promisingly but fizzled out. 4/10 Bethany Cox

2 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Made for TV, good acting and story, bad effects, 4 August 2009

Author: mergatroid-1 from Canada

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

When I saw this movie in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart I really didn't expect much. However, they did have a couple of actors from Firefly/Serenity and one from Supernatural. Of course George Kennedy is an excellent actor. So, there's no complaint about the acting.

The story is pretty good (a movie-set from early 1900s is being rediscovered for relocation before the area it is located in is flooded, however the artifacts are genuine Egyptian artifacts and one allows the release of an ancient Egyptian God. Let the blood flow.) My main beef with this movie is the same old beef people have had about low budget productions since they began filming them. The big monster is once again a guy in a cheesy suit. Of course, people like me who grew up on Dr Who and Star Trek are used to the actor in the cheesy suit syndrome, however I had thought that in the 21st century we would be seeing more cheesy computer effects than cheesy monster suits.

This monster suit is as bad as any I have seen. Complete with the stiff lower jaw that moves up and down like, well like a bad movie monster suit.

For producers who might per chance be reading this, please spend less money on hotels (you can get tents cheaper), food (I hear snake meat tastes like chicken) and bottled water (hey, just cause the water in the bucket is brown doesn't mean you can't drink it)and put the savings into making your monster look more real. A more realistic monster in this movie would have made the entire production better.

Hell, just making the monster headpiece more articulate would have vastly improved the movie.

So, if you're the type of person who can enjoy a play with bad effects, then maybe the monster suit won't bother you much and you can enjoy the rest of the movie. I got quite a laugh out of it myself, especially when the monster bit off George Kennedy's arm. It looked like someone had his arm in a stuffed crocodile's jaw, very funny stuff. Of course, I don't think it was MEANT to be funny. The rest of the movie was OK.

Once again, for people saying this is the worst movie, or second worse movie they've ever seen, I can only say they haven't seen very many movies. I can pull out 30 or 40 movies from my collection of over 500 that are WAY worse than this movie.

To put it into perspective, one day when I'm bored I might pull this DVD out and watch this movie again.

4 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Wasn't as bad as I'd hoped..., 29 July 2007

Author: takeru51 from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I make a point out of watching bad movies frequently, and the sci-fi channel original movies tend to be one of the best sources for these movies you can find. As such, I'm sure you can imagine my disappointment when I saw Sands of oblivion. The acting was uncharacteristically sub-par, as opposed to the woefully disgraceful display sci-fi usually has in store for us. There are a few cameos made by people you'd most likely recognize, although you may not know their names by heart. The CGI special effects are minimal, and as such, one of the largest sources of comedy in a sci-fi feature is lacking. Sure, there are some funny moments like when a guy gets beheaded by a bulldozer, or when the main character leaves his friend to die in order to save a girl he's known for a couple of days, but overall, it ends up just not having you rolling on the floor with laughter, and I consider that a major disappointment.

If I was rating it on a 10 star scale made specifically to judge made-for TV movies, I'd probably give it a 4, maybe even a 5. A real shame that I may have to wait 'till the next sci-fi original movie to get a good laugh, and I really hope that this movie isn't part of some overall quality increase in sci-fi original movies.

1 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Oblivious, 10 March 2010

Author: galahad58-1 from United States

Worse 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.

1 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Second-worst movie ever, 5 April 2008

Author: Matthijs from Leiden, Netherlands

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This 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.

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