Sand World, What Dune Should Have Been

If you sat through 1984's "Dune," you probably had the same thought as me.  Gee, this should have been done a bit differently.  The worms, Sting, Kenneth McMillan floating about, and Virginia Madsen in a forgettable role...that film should have been a classic.  Thanks to the Polonia Brothers, now we have that film...though Frank Herbert probably would not approve.  Today we look at 2021's "Sand World" (aka "Dune World"), directed by Mark and Anthony Polonia. 

A mining ship with a small crew heads to the moon Caliban.  20 years ago the former mining crew disappeared.  Babylon (Samantha Coolidge) is the acting captain after the death of their real captain, Raven (Cassandra Hayes).  Samantha is having weird visions as the ship nears Caliban...then some force from this moon disables the ship and it crash lands on the sandy surface.  Now the crew is on foot and trying to find the mining colony that went off-line 20 years ago.  A weird figure follows them, cloaked in black.  Also, huge worms explode out of the sand and begin eating crew members.  Now Babylon's visions intensify as a weird oracle (Jeff Kirkendall) speaks to them.  He was part of the missing mining colony.

Finally, Babylon and her men reach the ransacked mining colony as the worms keep attacking.  Now Babylon and her engineer, Kidd (Drew Patrick) tap into the computers and hear more from the oracle.  Also, Raven telepathically tells Babylon to stop resisting the strange cloaked tormentors and accept this weird moon as her new home.  The cloaked figures get closer and the crew's laser weapons are ineffective against them.  With the worms and mysterious cloaked figures closing in, a weird and philosophical conclusion nears.

Do the Polonia Brothers utilize the monster worm as erotically as Roger Corman did in "Galaxy of Terror," or as boring as David Lynch did in "Dune"?  Exactly what is Babylon's connection to her dead captain and the weird oracle?  Is the fact that Sting, or his character from the 1984 film, is not in this movie a guarantee that "Sand World" is a superior cinematic effort?  If "Sand World" was written before Frank Herbert wrote Dune, would he have become a romance novelist instead of a science fiction writer?  For Polonia Brothers fun, see "Sand World."