Colin Tilley made a nice but not scary horror about mystical retribution. Whitney Peak carries the film 'The Sandman' on her own, the Florida swamps look eerie, but there is no real horror.

'The Sandman', the debut of Colin Tilley — a director known to fans of Justin Bieber and RZA music videos — is an ambitious attempt to breathe new life into the subgenre of mystical Southern Gothic horror. Did he manage to create a truly terrifying film, or are we dealing with a beautiful but empty shell?

Anna (Whitney Peak) is forced to move from bustling New York to Florida after the sudden death of her parents. She moves in with her blind grandmother (C. Ipheta Merkerson), whom she meets for the first time, and tries to adapt to life in a provincial swampy town. Loneliness and trauma drive the heroine to befriend local teenagers, who seem like her only escape from isolation. However, the friendship turns into a nightmare: Anna becomes a witness (and perhaps an accomplice) to a brutal attack on a child.

According to local legend, such sins do not go unpunished — the Sandman appears, the soul of a once-tortured boy, who comes into the dreams of the offenders and takes their eyes. Now Anna must find out where the line between a scary fairy tale and a real threat lies.

The director can be praised for his visual boldness. Colin Tilley knows his way around a frame, and 'The Sandman' confirms this in almost every dream sequence. The nightmares truly resemble the logic of dreams: fragments of reality mix with absurd images, colors distort, objects change before your eyes. A man in a rabbit costume turns into a real black-and-white beast, which suddenly becomes white — these small details create a sense of genuine illusion. Additionally, the reality of swampy Florida looks both beautiful and menacing, and the atmosphere of Southern Gothic is felt in every element — fog, old trees, abandoned houses.​

Unfortunately, visual appeal does not compensate for dramatic weakness. The film looks more expensive than its budget, but that does not make it a full-fledged horror. Tilley forgot the main component of the genre — fear. The film does not scare, does not keep you on edge, does not make you jump. There is not a single truly terrifying moment that would linger in memory after the end credits.

If the film stays afloat, it is solely thanks to Whitney Peak. The actress, known from the series 'Gossip Girl', creates a convincing portrait of a traumatized girl trying to survive in an alien world. Peak does not fall into hysteria or annoy the viewer — her heroine holds the pain inside, and it is felt in her gestures and glances. C. Ipheta Merkerson as Grandma May also delights with restrained acting, especially in the scene where her own past and connection to the Sandman legend are revealed. The rest of the cast is frankly inferior: the teenage antagonists look clichéd, and their motivations are superficial.​

The script by Eliza Victoria and Michael Tully (based on Victoria's own graphic novel) attempts to raise themes of guilt, redemption, and inaction as a form of complicity. This is indeed an interesting angle: the heroine did not directly commit the crime, but her passivity makes her guilty. The moral question here is not black and white, and that is a plus. However, the execution falters — the film cannot decide whether it wants to be a dark parable about retribution or a teenage horror with folk elements. The result is something in between that satisfies neither fans of one nor supporters of the other.

'The Sandman' is a film for those who value atmosphere and visual style more than real horror. Colin Tilley proved he can shoot beautifully, but forgot the main purpose of horror — to scare. If you are a fan of Southern Gothic and don't mind spending an hour and a half contemplating swamp landscapes in the company of Whitney Peak, go ahead to the cinema (the film is in official release from October 23). But if you expect something truly terrifying — the film will give you a sense of missed opportunities, as if the film's potential dissolved somewhere in the fog of the Florida swamps.​