Sandman, The
By John Oak Dalton • Nov 8th, 2003 • Category: HorrorAn insomniac writer adrift in his career and at odds with his girlfriend washes up in a trailer park full of odd denizens, not the least of which is a monster who sucks the life out of people when they sleep. Cult b-movie director J.R. Bookwalter stretches a bit with this more ruminative outing, chockablock with interesting characters to compensate for some slender production value.
Notable in the vivid supporting cast is veteran scribe Matthew Jason Walsh as the writer’s stoner cousin Ozzy, Terry J. Lipko as a sleazy cheesecake photographer, and James Viront as a boggle-eyed prophesy-spouting Vietnam vet. The trailer-park setting is a nicely offbeat touch as well, and I liked the welcome doses of humor.
The aformentioned production values are a bit of a hindrance (the SVHS shooting looks a little long in the tooth today), as is a jumbled ending; part in reality and part in dreamscape and maybe with a side trip into hell, but largely on the road to nowhere, with one of those cliffhanger endings horror fans have to brace themselves for and always hate.
But overall I liked how Bookwalter and Walsh tried to elevate the genre with more complex characters and relationships and less splatter, and found The Sandman to be an interesting entry in Bookwalter’s varied directing history.
Two and a half stars.
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John Oak Dalton is a Community Television Station Manager by day, and a DIY acolyte by night. In the 80s he made Super-8 movies and his own basement mix tapes. In the 90s he hosted a cable-access show and made his own zines and minicomics. In the 21st Century he began working with grassroots video and microcinema and writing b-movies, and has more than a dozen projects on the shelf, on screen, in development, or in production.
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