DVD Reviews

Sanctum – Blu-ray Review

By Patrick Luce May 31, 2011, 13:45 GMT

From executive producer James Cameron (Avatar) comes a thrilling underwater adventure based on true events. Master diver Frank McGuire leads a team—including his 17-year-old son—to explore the largest most beautiful and least accessible cave system on Earth. But when a tropical storm cuts off their only escape route the team must work together to find their way through an uncharted and dangerous underwater labyrinth to make it out alive. With ...more

Executive produced by James Cameron, Sanctum is a surprising thrilling film about survival, and features some incredible action sequences.

Although Cameron’s name is front and center in big bold letters on the cover, the film was directed by Alister Grierson with a screenplay by John Garvin and Andrew Wight (who also wrote the story). It stars a cast of mostly unknown actors including Richard Roxburgh, Ioan Gruffudd (probably the most recognizable thanks to the Fantastic Four films), Rhys Wakefield, Alice Parkinson, Dan Wyllie, and Christopher Baker.

The film follows a group of explorers as they attempt to map out one of the world’s largest cave systems in New Guinea before a tropical storm forces them to leave. The team is led by Master diver Frank McGuire (Roxburgh) and includes his 17-year-old son Josh (Wakefield), money man Carl (Gruffudd) and Carl’s girlfriend Victoria (Parkinson).

Working against the storm’s deadline, Frank pushes his team to explore as much as they can, and the results end in a death. Things go from bad to worse as the storm pushes in faster than expected and traps the team underground as the cave is quickly flooding. Cut off from escape, Frank and his team must find a way out of the cave with minimal equipment and no clear path in sight.

Sanctum’s trailers made it look like a mix of sci-fi and horror, and I remember thinking of 2005’s The Cave or Neil Marshall's incredible thriller The Descent. Instead, the film is a straight-forward story of survival and the thrills come from the choices the survivors have to make to make their way to the surface.

Grierson is an incredible director and makes the most of his story’s tight spaces, dark setting, and rapidly flooding passages. Director of photography Jules O'Loughlin captures every scene with tight claustrophobic shots that make the danger feel very real, and helps sell the performances of the cast.

The actors are incredible in their roles and completely believable as they slowly break down from the situation. The father and son story is the heart of the movie’s plot, and gives it a dramatic anchor to make the story more than just simply people trapped underground. Gruffudd grows more annoying as the film moves along, but it serves his character since he seems to be a slick weasel from the second you see him on screen.

If the film has any flaws, it is in the final showdown between a very nutty Gruffud and Frank and Josh. The film didn’t need the sequence and it makes it seem like it was striving to provide a few thrills that weren’t needed. It is believable that Carl would go off the deep end, but the sequence took away from the overall flow of the movie.

The Blu-ray comes with some decent special features that include a look at the making of the film, and interviews concerning how the story began.

I didn’t know what to expect when I popped in Sanctum, but was quickly hooked on the film’s story. The film is suspenseful, entertaining, and easy to recommend.

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