The Sand (Monster)

The Sand Monster, also known as The Sand Jellyfish, is the antagonist of the 2015 movie "The Sand". It's best described as a predatory jellyfish-like creature, and is what lies in wait for the characters of the movie.

The Sand
At the beginning of the movie, there's a beach party with several young adults in attendance. Vance (Hector David Jr.) and Gilbert (Cleo Berry) find what looks to be a giant, slimey egg and set it near the beach fire. The first death in the movie happens after Kaylee (Brooke Butler) wakes up in the lifeguard stand alongside Mitch (Mitchel Musso). A bird landed on the beach and looked to be struggling before being pulled under the sand moments later.

The next victim of the sand monster is a girl named Marsha (Nikki Leigh), who woke up on a beach table without her bikini top. Upon going to look for a girl named Heather, whom Marsha assumed took her top, she steps off the table. Kaylee attempts to warn her, but is too late when Marsha realizes she can't move her feet. In the front seats of his converitble are Jonah (Dean Geyer), Chanda (Meagan Holder), while Vance and Ronnie (Cynthia Murell) are in the back seats. All four within the car are awake and ridicule Marsha for saying that she's stuck, and continue to do so until she begins to panic. Vance decides to go to her aid by jumping from the car, only to stumble and fall forward into the sand. Upon attempting to get up, half of his face is discovered to have been ripped from him, to the point where an eyeball is seen hanging from the socket. Vance is seen being pulled under the sand, leaving a hysterical Ronnie, while Marsha is presumed to have suffered the same fate off-screen.

Chanda points out what used to be the slimey egg from earlier, now broken in half as if something hatched from it. The group look at the beach and see that several sleeping bags and towels have been abandoned, leading to the conclusion that the creature hatched during the night and devoured everyone who wasn't somewhere unattached to the sand, such as Jonah's car, the lifeguard stand, and the beach tables.

Gilbert awakens and finds that not only is everything below his stomach trapped in a trash can, but that the group is panicking. Mitch manages to calm him down by saying that the tide would come in soon, wanting for his friend to not become hysterical. Kaylee gets the idea to take a pack of hotdogs from the lifeguard stand and to throw them in random directions so to see how far the monster's reach is. Mitch helps with this, and the first hotdog that he throws is caught in mid-air by a passing bird. This is where Gilbert witnesses the bird land on the sand and get sucked under, shattering his "calm" mind.

Jonah gets the idea to use two surfboards to create a makeshift bridge across the sand so to not step directly on it, but upon almost reaching a table, the creature begins to slowly shift the surfboards. Slipping, Jonah manages to keep his feet on one of the surfboards while having his hands on the table, but this leaves his stomach exposed to the sand. The creature takes advantage of this by slashing at his stomach, leaving puss scattered on Jonah's stomach. Based on how much agony he was in, Ronnie deduces that it was poison, similar to a jellyfish. Jonah safely makes it to the beach table, but is left on his back from how much pain he was in. He also discovers that the monster won't go near the fire pit, hinting at a possible weakness.

A beach patrolman (Jamie Kennedy) drives onto the scene, seeing the scattered group. He sees Ronnie, who had attempted to get the confiscated phones from a bag that was kept in the trunk of Jonah's car, she now having her hand caught by the trunk. Everyone is surprised by how the sand isn't affecting him, only for Mitch to point out the patrol boots, hinting that the creature couldn't pull him down. He criticizes Chanda for "not helping" her, shows disgust for Jonah's condition, and makes a quip to Gilbert upon discovering that a phallus was drawn on his face. After a brief argument with Mitch and Kaylee, he threatens to come up to the lifeguard stand with his pepper spray, and ends up dropping his keys. Once more, Kaylee attempts to warn him, only to not be quick enough. With his hand stuck in the sand, he manages to use his pepper spray on his arm, only to discover that it's almost completely gone to the sand. Kaylee manages to retrieve his pepper spray before returning to the lifeguard stand while the patrolman is pulled under, having seen that pepper spray can cause for the creature to temporarily release its hold.

Mitch, also seeing the effects of the pepper spray, decides to put on flip flops and wrap his feet in beach towels after they're coated in pepper spray so that he can run to the patrol car. Unfortunately, when Chanda is throwing a beach towel at him, the railing he was leaning against breaks and he falls onto the sand. The creature pulls his gut out from behind him, as he landed on his back, creating a pool of blood around him before sucking him under.

Ronnie and Chanda try using pieces of the railing as a bridge to where Jonah's laying, and after the two are across, Ronnie almost makes it to the safety of the table. She ends up losing her balance, leading for Chanda to use the pepper spray where Ronnie was going to land. It seems to work for a moment, but Ronnie also ends up being taken under the sand by the creature.

Chanda decides to put Mitch's plan into action by wrapping the beach towels around her feet and to soak them in pepper spray. The plan works and she makes it to the patrol car. It's while everyone's cheering for her does Gilbert realize that the blood from a cut he had on his stomach attracted the creature. He's killed when he tries to struggle from the trash can, only for tentacles to wrap around him and pull him down. The creature then manages to shake the patrol car and knock Chanda out in doing so.

The next scene with the creature is at night time when Chanda wakes up and finds an inflatable raft. When she puts it on the beach and helps Kaylee get Jonah into the car, the creature knocks against it, forcing Kaylee back onto the raft. A tentacle rises from the sand and a brief fight ensues, leading for Kaylee to end up on top of the car and find a container of gasoline. Lighting it with a pack of matches, she soaks the tentacle and sets it ablaze.

The last scene with the monster is its silhouette in the water while it swims to another beach, the beach-goers having no idea of what's heading ttheir way.

Appearance
While we don't see the creature in its entirity, we are provided portions of it. Little strands are shown to come from the sand, some of which able to go a little higher than the others. Kaylee first discovers the strands couldn't reach her hand when she hovered it over the sand. Later, however, when Jonah's stomach is exposed to the sand, strands are shown to be able to reach him enough to slash across his stomach. Gilbert's death shows us that the creature has multiple tentacles, and the brief fight that it has with Kaylee proves that the monster and its tentacles have grown since then. The last scene depicts a silhouette of what can best be described as a giant jellyfish.