Early in "Sinking Sand," the protagonist Brooke McHenry asks the question, "How do people get themselves into all that trouble?" By the end of the film, she is able to answer that question, based on her own experience.
Brooke is the wife of a powerful prosecuting attorney, Daniel McHenry, who is making a campaign run for the Senate. At a time when the workaholic husband is ignoring his wife, Brooke has brief flirtation with a man named Tyler, a smooth operator who has "targeted" Brooke for blackmail.
Nothing much happens between Tyler and Brooke other than a few glasses of wine and a kiss on the cheek. But Tyler secretly records their conversations, then edits the material to be damaging to Brooke. He then issues a blackmail threat and Brooke conks him over the head with a piece of driftwood and destroys the recordings.
The film has a low-budget look to it with a minimalist design and a small cast. Some of the special effects resembled films in the 1950s with obvious ocean backdrops superimposed in a studio shoot with fans running to create the effect of hair billowing in the wind. The character of Brooke's sister Evie was also problematic. In one scene, it appeared that Evie was on intimate terms with Tyler and might have even set her sister up for the blackmail plot.
The best part of the film is the homestretch with a wild trial scene and a nifty plot twist. In addition to all of her travails, Brooke is also pregnant, and we watch a nearly full gestation period evolve in the course of the film. "Sinking Sand" was not a great film, but it is worth a look for the grand finale with the courtroom pyrotechnics, which should appeal to fans of the Lifetime Channel.
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