SANCTUM Review

GRADE: 3 out of 5

SANCTUM is a terrifying survival/adventure film that brings out both the best and worst in human nature. The story is nothing new, the characters are familiar but the implementation of cave diving elements and 3D technology make this an enjoyable thrill ride packed with enough surprises around each corner. To me the weakest part of the film is the father-son drama, which at one point gets a bit too melodramatic for the film’s overall tone…

The 3D action-thriller “Sanctum,” from executive producer James Cameron, follows a team of underwater cave divers on a treacherous expedition to the largest, most beautiful and least accessible cave system on Earth. When a tropical storm forces them deep into the caverns, they must fight raging water, deadly terrain and creeping panic as they search for an unknown escape route to the sea.
Master diver Frank McGuire (Richard Roxburgh) has explored the South Pacific’s Esa-ala Caves for months. But when his exit is cut off in a flash flood, Frank’s team–including 17-year-old son Josh (Rhys Wakefield) and financier Carl Hurley (Ioan Gruffudd)–are forced to radically alter plans. With dwindling supplies, the crew must navigate an underwater labyrinth to make it out. Soon, they are confronted with the unavoidable question: Can they survive, or will they be trapped forever?
Shot on location off the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, “Sanctum” employs 3D photography techniques Cameron developed to lens “Avatar.” Designed to operate in extreme environments, the technology used to shoot the action-thriller will bring audiences on a breathless journey across plunging cliffs and into the furthest reaches of our subterranean world.

When I had a conversation with co-screenwriter Andrew Wight about this film, he insisted that this was never meant to be a horror film, be that as it may, SANCTUM has enough shocker to be considered part of that genre.

We’ve seen a lot of survival films like this out there where you have a group of people trapped in a complicated situation and the story keeps taking their comfort one at a time by the minute and the fear of impending death sinks in and panic gets hold of calm steady mind thinking of a way out. When it gets more inconvenient, when situation gets even more complicated, when death is picking up its pace, chasing you and it’s getting closer and closer and more inevitable, all of a sudden tensions run high, suspicions rise and as one by one gets killed off, the story forces you to wonder, makes you question which character would you side with.

SANCTUM allows the cave itself to play a significant supporting role. By the way, I read the press notes about their tricks on filming this project and when I saw the film I had to say, the guys of SANCTUM’s production design did a marvelous job . I’ve done caving and rock climbing myself but nothing as ambitious as what the characters try to accomplish in the film and my experience was more of a hobby, not to explore anything groundbreaking. So folks like me could relate to the terms and jargons used in this film but audiences who may not have done adventurous activities such as this might not connect as well but they will stick around on account of wanting to see who would survive and who wouldn’t make it and especially, as morbid as this sounds, how exactly in details do some of those characters meet their painful end. SANCTUM doesn’t dumb itself down, it really wants to show an unforgiving cave that may become your ally if you trust and respect it

So there’s the caving part, the thriller/scary part and now we get to the part that could be more well-written. I understand the intention to make this a father-son drama, a coming of age story, something more to offer on top of what’s already laid out. The father named Frank is this expert who knows that in the game of surviving disasters like this, you have to put certain emotions aside, whereas his son Josh is more of idealist, looking at some of his father’s decision as inhumane and playing God. And then they’re surrounded by other characters, some of them gang up on Frank, marking him as a heartless bastard while one tries to tell Josh that he ain’t so bad once you get to know him. Shere’s that moral ethics dilemma and tough love conditions that the story frequently tries to offer the audience, whether or not we’d want to participate in it is our decision to make but sadly the way Frank and Josh eventually bond isn’t strong or convincing enough to make me want to believe that there’s some kind of reconciliation in the midst of all that mayhem. And their dialogue is a bit formulaic, not to mention it doesn’t get more of a cliché, or sentimental and time consuming than a person holding another person dying but it takes forever for that person to die because for some reason he could still recite a very lengthy speech.
But I suppose if SANCTUM took even more time to fix that part, people would start wondering if the film has some kind of identity crisis, if they’ve come to watch a thriller, a drama or a nature show ala national geographic channel that they could easily watch at the comfort of their own homes