Release date: February 4th, 2011
Genre: Action, adventure, drama and suspense
Director: Alister Grierson
Writers: John Garvin (screenplay), Andrew Wight (story)
Cast: Richard Roxburgh, Rhys Wakefield, Ioan Gruffudd, Alice Parkinson, Dan Wylie
Official site: http://www.sanctummovie.com/
Running time: 109 minutes
Synopsis
The story took place in Esa-ala (mother of all caves), Papua New Guinea. It was said to be the largest unexplored cave system in the world, is where professional cave diver Frank McGuire (Richard Roxburgh) and his team have been based for the last thirty-four days. Pushed to their limits and tired, they are joined on the last leg of their research by Frank's 17-year-old son Josh (Rhys Wakefield), wealthy entrepreneur who is basically fund the whole project Carl Hurley (Ioan Gruffudd), and Carl's inexperienced girlfriend Victoria (Alice Parkinson) .The bigger crowd were unfortunately just in time for a bad storm to rustle up and a falling boulder to block their exit. With the water quickly rising, the group has no choice but to move forward in hopes of finding a different way out and reaching the surface. As the terrain grows increasingly life challenging and their oxygen tanks and lights runs out one by one, this is when the team started to crack. It didn’t take long before panic, hypothermia, illness, bodily harm and paranoia set in. Along the way in survival, true colors of each of the team members were also shown. Amidst it all, Frank and Josh are finally forced to face their troubled father-son relationship head-on.
Life and death predicament
Sanctum pushes characters into intense and exciting life or death situation but quickly turns into an incoherent and claustrophobic downward spiral.
This film is not for the claustrophobic. The entirety of the movie takes place in a dark and tight cave. The camera is up close to all of the action in the movie, which even makes the viewers feel enclosed. This makes the actions and locations of the characters hard to follow, one stretch of the cave starts to look just like the last and by the end the audience is just as relieved to get out of that cave as the one's trapped.
Despite the extreme peril the characters come out one sided. Almost no character development occurs before the team finds themselves stranded. Aside from a brief introduction, which shows nothing other than insanity or possibly suicidal tendencies, no insight is given into the characters. Even with these flaws the actor's do sufficient work. No one will be going up for an Oscar but the talent in this film definitely makes the characters more relatable.
It seems a person's mental state could be a focal point in a movie where people are forced to think logically and calmly in order to survive. But only a solitary scene near the end of the movie plunges deep into a human's motivation to live and just how far a person can be mentally pushed under this stress. If this factor was focused on it would have added a great deal of credibility to the film.
This film is not for the claustrophobic. The entirety of the movie takes place in a dark and tight cave. The camera is up close to all of the action in the movie, which even makes the viewers feel enclosed. This makes the actions and locations of the characters hard to follow, one stretch of the cave starts to look just like the last and by the end the audience is just as relieved to get out of that cave as the one's trapped.
Despite the extreme peril the characters come out one sided. Almost no character development occurs before the team finds themselves stranded. Aside from a brief introduction, which shows nothing other than insanity or possibly suicidal tendencies, no insight is given into the characters. Even with these flaws the actor's do sufficient work. No one will be going up for an Oscar but the talent in this film definitely makes the characters more relatable.
It seems a person's mental state could be a focal point in a movie where people are forced to think logically and calmly in order to survive. But only a solitary scene near the end of the movie plunges deep into a human's motivation to live and just how far a person can be mentally pushed under this stress. If this factor was focused on it would have added a great deal of credibility to the film.
