Sleepstalker

Lions Gate, 2005.

Main character had his parents murdered by psycho-killer when he was a boy. Psycho-killer put down, but through some unholy ritual has his soul transmuted into sand, thus becoming, the Sandman. Why they didn't choose this title I don't know, maybe it'd been taken.

The only real hokiness to the plot is that the main character, Griffin, is a writer who's worked his way into the good graces of the meanest LA chicano ganglord and has scored a once-in-a-lifetime interview. Apart from doing nothing to further the plot (except for getting him access to weaponry - which could have been used to much greater effect, by the way) it does nothing but seem tepid and stale. Even in a movie where a guy goes around, made of sand, burying people inside his shifting body, it still has to ring true in the less supernatural elements.

Oh yeah, here's the spoiler: The sandman had a bad childhood - killed his own parents to save his own little baby brother in the crib from the same abusive fate at the hands of a drunken father. The baby brother is, you guessed it, Griffin, and the Sandman has to kill him in order to free himself completely of any human attachments and be completely ruled by Satan. Got it.

Second spoiler - he does, indeed, kill Griffin - which I thought was probably the most original aspect of the movie. Griffin's girlfriend, however, kills the Sandman, so the rest of us are spared a similar fate.

OK - 'nuff said.

VG