Sea of Dust (2008)

A Disappointing Continuation

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I think that some of the other reviewers are being overly generous in their praise for this movie. The current rating from ALL users is much more accurate.As others point out, this is an homage to the Hammer films of fifty years ago. Unfortunately, it is an homage only in the camera-work, wardrobe, settings, and subject matter. It is very disappointing to see the majority of the film shot in broad daylight, completely missing the beautiful lighting and cinematography that Hammer used to convey a sense of gloom and claustrophobia. I also think it would have been far more effective if shot in B&W, but then how would you show off Savini's FX? The acting and dialogue are both quite bad. There's no single character who I found to be even minimally authentic or believable. Savini, as a weird Dracula-like religious figure, is waaay out ahead of everybody else in the bad acting department. Simply no contest. Fortunately, he's on-screen only for a short time. Unfortunately, nobody else is really much better than he is.As for the plot...wait, what plot? This movie makes "Primer" look fairly simple. There are dream sequences (or "otherworldly" sequences, whichever you prefer) within dream sequences, and you never really know what the director's intentions are. The satirical elements are extremely heavy-handed, and the entire script strikes me as something that a high-schooler would write after he reads his first philosophy of religion book. You can tell because the script uses the word "ideology" instead of "religious belief" or "faith" or any of a number of more accurate and descriptive terms. In other words, the characters are implementing an "ideology" and not just hare-brained religious ideas. The whole thing just rings false.Finally, let's get to the gore. There's lots of it, but it's really pretty poor. Savini has done much better work. I guess he was just distracted. As far as the need for the gore, there isn't any. The movie starts out as sort of an explanation of religious belief, then devolves into a gore-fest that's punctuated by weird ideas of what constitutes a myth.All in all, a very poor showing and not worth your time. On top of everything else, it is BORING!

I also attended the RI International Horror Film Festival and I can easily see why this film won best of show.SEA OF DUST is a wild romp of Horror, Comedy and beautiful scenery. A back in time tale of strange goings on. An increasingly wide spread illness with an overwhelmingly irritating side effect of people's heads exploding, brings a young Professor's apprentice; Stefan, to investigate. Along his travels, he decides to briefly detour and once again ask for his long time love's hand in marriage, only to once again be sent packing by her extremely stubborn father… Along the way "out of town" he comes across an ill girl in the road and delivers her to Dr. Maitland, (brilliantly played by up and coming Vincent Price like actor: Edward X Young.) Who fills Stefan in on the Evils a foot. Only the Dr. is insulted that he had called for the Professor and only received a boy in training…None the less, Stefan turns out to be much more than a common bystander. Horror Icon; Tom Savini portrays the ultimate religious torment monger; Prester John. Scream Queen; Ingrid Pitt comes out of retirement to give a stellar performance as Anna. Many beautiful and talented supporting actors seamlessly held the story together and helped to effectively move it along to the climax.Dark Religion and over the top, but fun and sometimes very original, gore scenes play heavily in this Hammer tribute flick. This stylish movie goes back and forth between flashbacks, surreal worlds, dreams and the character's reality.Horror and Gore aside; This is also a very Funny movie! Slapstick, tongue and cheek humor and dark comedy raise their heads among the dark story line. Like others have stated; this really is like three great movies in one. Very Entertaining and Original.

I watched SEA OF DUST at the Rhode Island Horror Film Festival in Providence. It was the Festival's featured film and won Best Picture out of I think a couple hundred entries. The director and a few of the stars answered questions after the showing. One star, Suzy Lorraine, was even hotter in person than in the film, and she was an eye catcher in the movie.This film is independent, yet it has a lot of cinematic touches that give it a quality feel. It even has an original classical style musical score.I am a Savini fan and he's the star villain here, in black cape, he's more of an evil force than a real person I think. He is sucking the souls out of people and using them as soldiers in a twisted attempt to establish his version of the Kingdom of God on Earth. In his view, Christ was all about suffering and Savini intends to make everyone suffer.The main story line that holds your interest is about a young doctor, Stefan, who is sent to investigate the strange events Savini is causing in an isolated town. He proposes to an aristocrat chick on the way but her SOB father tells him to get lost. Then he meets up with a strangely possessed but alluring country girl. I think she falls in love with him, but she also tries to kill him, as do a number of hot women in the film.I found the scenes shot in the woods to be the creepiest and most eye catching, with strange people along the road (the evil little twin girls scared the hell out of me).The film has a lot to it, too much to list. There is a lot of blood, torture and gore. Hot chicks licking blood off of guys' fingers. A terrified girl's head explodes. That was unexpected. Throats get slit. Some brutal stabbings.Then they play it for laughs sometimes, poking a bit of fun at the whole evil black forest genre.If you're a fan of Hammer films and Ingrid Pitt, it is fascinating to see her in this movie. She offs one of the leads by plunging a cross in his skull. Excellent. The guy who played "Multiple Miggs" in Silence of the Lambs is great in an axe fight.The movie is surreal and with the ending, I'm not sure the events happened or if they were in Stefan's head because of his rejection by his would-be fiancée. He returns in vengeance and that scene is brutal.The director also talked about the theme of religion being misused to back wars and killings. I can see that for sure, Savini's view of religion was scary.This was a strangely exceptional movie with some stars like Savini and Pitt, a lot of good supporting cast including hot babes, great gore scenes, action, and all the time you're wondering what the hell is going on and what is going to happen next.This deserves ten stars because it's an excellent independent film effort, I don't think it was low budget but it had to be way less than a big studio budget, and yet they managed to make something really attractive, unique and thought provoking.

I saw SEA OF DUST as part of a NYC screening audience several years ago. I enjoyed the film at that time, so I was a little confused by some of the amendments that had been made since. Perhaps it's my memory, but there seemed to be chunks of exposition missing from the version that was shown at the Rhode Island Film Festival. I'm really not sure which version I prefer, but I can honestly say that I found something to appreciate it both.Let me begin by warning everyone that this is not a popcorn movie. Although it's been promoted as a Hammer Films tribute, people expecting a showdown between Van Helsing and Dracula are going to be sorely disappointed. There's some cleavage, but no nudity (a staple of the British production house's later movies). And while SEA OF DUST is filled with gorgeous eye candy (it really is shot like a sixties film), and features Hammer starlet Ingrid Pitt, it's not like any of the company's pictures in tone or execution. This film is very dark, very confusing, and (at times) very funny. I don't remember the earlier version being quite as nutty as this one, but that's not a bad thing (especially the showdown in the Black Forest that plays like a Three Stooges short). And some of Ms Pitt's rantings are quite entertaining. It's like somebody wound her up and turned her loose.The uniqueness of this film doesn't lie with the borrowed details, though. It's in the ideas. As an occasional Sci Fi Channel viewer, I've regularly taken the network to task for its one-note variations on a theme (CGI monster kills, then gets destroyed). SEA OF DUST is so full of ideas that you start to trip over them after a while.But don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. If anything, I applaud these guys for making such an enterprising low-budget picture and for having the courage to pack it with so many concepts. It's not going to be a picnic for people who hate to think at the movies (you know who you are). But for the rest of us, those of us who are tired of the formula of modern horror films, the predictability, the lack of respect for the audience, this may just be your ticket.