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Sanctum
(2011)
 
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Director:
Alister
Grierson |
COUNTRY
Australia |
GENRE
Thriller |
NORWEGIAN TITLE
Sanctum |
RUNNING
TIME
109
minutes |
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Producer:
Andrew Wight |
Screenwriter (based on a story by Andrew Wight):
John Gavin
Andrew Wight |
Review
A group of cave explorers and divers
go to an impressive, never-before-explored cave in Papua New Guinea
armed with lots of adrenaline, fancy equipment and horrible dialogue.
James Cameron has put his name on this production, which proudly boasts
this affiliation as well as its 3D photography. This review is based on
the flat version, however, so I must reserve the unlikely possibility
that the 3D version glosses over all of the film's weaknesses.
Because there are quite a few of
those, and they are not exactly subtle. Firstly, the characters are flat
as Denmark, caused by the never fortunate combination of bad writing and
bad acting. Poor Rhys Wakefield puts too much effort into his cliched
character, and ends up making it far too big for his own good. And with
Richard Roxburgh playing the kid's father in Sly Stallone mode (which is
actually quite effective, if not exactly subtle), you realize early on
that the success of Sanctum is down to whatever excitement and
thrills the filmmakers are able to create from its typical disaster film
setup.
And impressively, the film improves as
it goes along. After a while, the tacky dialogue dries up (probably
because there are increasingly fewer characters with increasingly less
to brag about), and the race against time and air is both exhilarating
and fascinating in a primal sort of way. There is a decisive scene
towards the end, in which two of the principal characters say goodbye,
which confirms that these guys are not really from our civilized, modern
society; they're from ancient times, battling it out in an ancient cave.
And with this realization in mind, the film's initial problems dealing
with people in modern situations seem almost irrelevant. Sanctum
is exciting, not clever.
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