Sanctum

Produced by James Cameron, Sanctum follows the members of a cave diving team, including Richard Roxburgh’s Frank, Ioan Gruffudd’s Carl, and Alice Parkinson’s Victoria, as they find themselves trapped within an expansive underground system and must subsequently attempt to escape by venturing further into the labyrinth. It’s a promising setup that is, at the outset, employed to seriously underwhelming effect by director Alister Grierson, as the filmmaker, working from John Garvin and Andrew Wight’s screenplay, offers up a bland assortment of characters and tosses them into one tedious scenario after another. It’s not until the situation begins to worsen that the movie starts to improve (albeit slightly), with the inclusion of a few admittedly gripping set-pieces (eg one character’s breathing apparatus malfunctions) certainly proving instrumental in resuscitating the viewer’s dwindling interest. And while virtually all of the protagonists remain hopelessly unsympathetic from start to finish, it does become marginally easier to root for their ongoing efforts as they’re slowly-but-surely killed off one by one. The mindlessly watchable atmosphere is perpetuated by Grierson’s emphasis on sequences of a decidedly suspenseful variety, with the highlight undoubtedly a cringeworthy, impressively brutal scene in which one character’s hair winds up caught in her gear. The passable vibe persists right up until the absolutely ludicrous finale, with Garvin and Wight’s decision to transform one of the surviving characters into a monstrous villain smacking of desperation (and needlessness) and ensuring that the film concludes on as anticlimactic a note as one could possibly envision – which effectively cements Sanctum‘s place as a well-intentioned yet utterly misguided underwater thriller.

** out of ****