Sanctum

Sanctum (2011)

30% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 136 reviews)

Runtime: 109 minutes

Directed by: Alister Grierson

Starring: Richard Roxburgh, Ioan Gruffudd, Rhys Wakefield, Alice Parkinson

From: Universal

Oh man. What a miss this was. And it shouldn’t have been this aggravating to watch. The main reason why I went to see this was that I was bored last night and I wanted to go to the AMC Theatres at Downtown Disney in order to enjoy their giant ETX screen and their Coca-Coca Freestyle machine, where you get 106 different flavors, remember. This was the only movie that fit the bill. I certainly won’t go to the ETX now that they’re showing the Justin Bieber concert movie… although I wonder if I would have enjoyed that more than this movie!

You’ve probably seen the ads, but in any case, this movie is about some cave explorers who are in Papua New Guinea to do some exploring. Complications happen (in this case, a cyclone arrives out of nowhere and flooding happens), resulting in the characters having to try and find another way out.

I can’t say I’ve seen too many cave films before. I doubt there ARE too many of them out there, as it must not be easy to try and film. The Descent does a great job of that. Besides the monster stuff there are many tense moments with the characters trying to get out of their situation. There’s also The Cave, which I haven’t seen but I hear it is very similar to The Descent, only it’s not as good. I’ll have to watch that one of these days for comparison reasons. I think I’d enjoy that rather than this movie, to be perfectly honest.

It isn’t the 3D stuff that was the devil in the details. Using James Cameron’s fancy cameras, it looked pretty nice. Rather, it was the script that sunk things. It is based (rather loosely) on a true story. It’s hard to believe given all the stereotypes and stock situations you see here. It’s hackneyed and cliché-ridden. There’s the gruff father who’s a master at exploring caves (Roxburgh), the whiny bratty son who has daddy issues (Wakefield), a rich thrillseeker who is funding this operation (Gruffudd), and so on and so forth. Then there’s the situations they are put in. Totally out of the screenwriting playbook. It was so disappointing. There could have been some creative and interesting situations that they could have been put in if you’re making most of it up. Instead, it’s standard situations with some stupid plot twists.

And, the characters that get trapped down there don’t act intelligently. Rather, they act dumb and do dumb things, only because the script told them to do so. I can’t blame the actors for it. But what *really* grinded my gears was all the arguing that they did. It happened constantly to create drama, which I didn’t think was needed in the situation. Look at The Descent, for example. There were many tense moments in that, even before the monsters appeared and did their damage. There was suspense that was done well and it didn’t involve people arguing and griping with each other about what to do, or them making the dim-witted decision just to advance the story. There is a tension-filled movie done right. This, though, was a disappointment and I don’t think I can say much more than that.

Although, I do have to mention that a guy named George (Dan Wyllie) who was the one person I didn’t hate. He was just wacky. He wore a Ramones T-shirt early on, said some colorful phrases, and mentioned that he got “The Clap in Mexico”. Tremendous.

I'll be back Monday night with a new review.