Sand Serpents isn’t going to when any awards, but it’s a decent way to kill an hour and half. Despite being a B-movie, the special effects are at least several notches above the drek that normally appears on the SyFy channel every weekend and the acting was passable most of the time. The story of a group of soldiers being terrorized by giant underground earthworms in the mountains of Afghanistan is really nothing new since Kevin Bacon did is better and with a bigger budget back in the 90′s with Tremors. Still, I enjoyed myself even though I wish the film had spent a bit more time actually dealing with the titular sand serpent menace rather than spending valuable film time on increasingly repetitive battles with Taliban terrorists.

Oh, that reminds me, it was quite refreshing to watch a horror movie that didn’t bash the military or our mission in Afghanistan while still taking the time to depict the Afghani people as normal people who are NOT all terrorist sympathizers. This middle of the road approach was a nice pace to the preachy anti-war, anti-military, global warming propaganda that’s been so pervasive in the horror film industry as of late. Thankfully, it appears that you can still make a silly low budget movie these days without including that kind of retardness.

Bottom Line:

Sand Serpents is a passable B-movie that with better than average production values compared to previous SyFy channel productions. It’s not going to set your world on fire, but the unintentional camp and the lack of any sort of heavy handed political brow-beating made it far more enjoyable than I expected it to be. I suggest you watch it off Netflix’s instant queue as I did or wait for it to air on the Syfy channel again.

Final Score: 3 out of 5 stars
Reviewed by: LC1
Review Format: Netflix streaming video via Xbox Live