A cave diving movie, in 3D? Surely a tense, rip the armrests off the seat experience? And it’s got James Cameron credited as an executive producer!! What could go wrong? Just like the story in the movie, more or less everything.
An underwater cave diving team get into a spot of bother in one of the least explored cave systems in the world, when their exit route becomes blocked and the cave starts to flood. Ok, so the cave isn’t exactly somewhere a grizzly bear would go into hibernation, but it’s a vast wilderness of nothing. So our hapless team have to try and escape and survive, with little oxygen and little food. Can they do it? Will they all survive? Will you even care? Besides an undercurrent (sorry) of a father and son rekindling their relationship the laws of predictability apply here until the final minutes, which to be fair I didn’t see coming and then a big dollop of Hollywood cheese comes your way. Then again, I’ve had a serious jolt to my sleep patterns this week and that may be the cause.
The cast, with the exception of Richard Roxburgh and Rhys Wakefield ,are about as good as a dead battery and plough through their roles awkwardly and uncomfortably. Roxburgh is incredibly bad-ass and pull’s off a modern, hardnosed Indiana Jones type character quite well and Wakefield does well as his rock climbing son. The two are really convincing as father and son. But overall it’s very hard to make any connection to any character here.
The film itself has a few moments of tension but you get immune to them after about 5 minutes and they become boring and drawn out. At times though, some of the underwater scenes are quite beautiful and the sense of scale is quite unique and impressive. But unfortunately a few decent shots (which would be better off in a documentary on Discovery) can’t save Sanctum.
As for the 3D side of it…Well, it adds absolutely NOTHING to the experience and that’s quite surprising giving Cameron’s name being attached to this movie. Not once does the 3D give any sense of scale or depth and yet again it proves pointless and detracts away from the movie at hand. Every single piece of blurb and video for this has James Cameron’s name attached to it and I wonder why the hell he lent his name as executive producer to this. Cameron has pioneered 3D with Avatar but sticking his name to this rubbish is only a step backwards.
Overall, Sanctum 3D is bland, flat and runs out of oxygen very, very quickly. I wouldn’t be in a rush to dive in. Disappointing drivel.
