Popcorn Frights 2026 Coverage
Life at Sandy’s review
A top tier concept that doesn’t quite get played for all its worth.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
Life at Sandy’s
Directed by Aleksandra Hansen
Written by Aleksandra Hansen
Starring Heather Cunningham
Life at Sandy’s Review
When I wrote about The Vanishing Tour yesterday I brought up how impressed I was with its concept. That movie hides what it really is by luring you in with something familiar. Life at Sandy’s has another tremendous concept. Popcorn Frights is 2 for 2! The difference in how the two stories utilize them is the real story. The Vanishing Tour turns in a way that makes everything feel like a surprising discovery. Life at Sandy’s doesn’t hide what it is at all…and instead uses it for a metaphor. The result is a strong, original movie. The only problem is that you can see the fun that it leaves on the table.
There’s a screenwriting phrase called “kill your darlings”. It’s pretty obvious what it means…that’s what makes it a good phrase. Basically…sometimes you have to let go of your best ideas to make the overall concept work as well as it can. Think of the movie Lisa Frankenstein. I like that movie…but I like it more than I think it’s good. Because it was incapable of killing its darlings. Instead of a strong cohesive narrative with a meaningful and propulsive arc for its main character…it becomes a collection of fun ideas that use Lisa’s story as connective tissue more than development. Life at Sandy’s may not have actually killed any of its darlings. There’s a good chance it turned out exactly as originally intended. But the concept in play offered up a lot of space for fun to be had…and Life at Sandy’s chooses to stick to its metaphor and not play in that space very often.
Sandy is the name of a character on a fictional tv show. The show isn’t just fictional in our world…it doesn’t even exist in the world in which this story takes place. Evelyn (Heather Cunningham) is lost in all aspects of her life. The death of her mother finds her squatting in her mother’s house…which is owned by her pushy aunt. Not that the aunt is wrong…Evelyn is directionless and passionless. She works one day a week…barely at that. Mostly, Evelyn watches a television show called Life at Sandy’s. There’s no record of this show on the internet. That would be weird enough even if the characters inside the show didn’t start talking directly to Evelyn. But they do.
The TV show is a milquetoast quasi-sitcom style show that takes place entirely at Sandy’s…the coffee shop owned by Sandy (Amy Biedel). The characters inside the shop all seem so happy and content. Everything that Evelyn isn’t. But maybe she could be. Not by putting in the work to better herself or finding meaningful and fulfilling relationships and hobbies of course. By joining the show herself.
At this point you may be letting your mind wander through ideas that you could do with this concept. Especially since the patrons in Sandy’s shop seem to want to tell Evelyn that everything isn’t as great as it seems. Right there…that opens the door to some real horror fun, doesn’t it? Well Life at Sandy’s isn’t going in that direction. It would have been fun…to discover the dark secrets and dangers of these trapped characters. Watching Evelyn confront that darkness and come out the other side with a sense of purpose and accomplishment. That’s not the story that Life at Sandy’s is telling. And it knows that following the fun too far down the rabbit hole will only hurt the uniformity of what it actually wants to say.
Now…I know how that sounds. I just laid out in some detail that Life at Sandy’s runs away from any fun ideas. That’s not entirely true. The entire concept is a fun one. The little moments the characters have while we watch are fun too. But Evelyn’s life isn’t fun. And Life at Sandy’s wants to make sure that is the overwhelming feeling given where it’s going to end up. Instead of a horror/comedy we get a dramatic story with an otherworldly bent. And that’s fine. Because it’s a good dramatic story with an otherworldly bent. Made that way by sticking to its guns while we watch someone sad watch something fun while they wish they were having fun…and we do to.
I swear it plays out better than that sounds.
Scare Value
I hope the review hasn’t put you off watching Life at Sandy’s. I genuinely enjoyed its slightly weird and ultimately dramatic story. I just couldn’t unsee the opportunities that it let slide by to remain committed to what it wanted to be. More movies should have the conviction to stick to their guns like that. There’s a reason they don’t, of course. Most people would rather just watch something fun…even if it betrays its own narrative arcs. If I liked Lisa Frankenstein more than I thought it was good…it would be fair to say that I think Life is Sandy’s is better than I liked it.
