Review of Sanctum (2011) by Bathmat — 21 Mar 2011

A visual treat this one, especially in 3-D. Sanctum is a brilliant looker. The movie wants you to be in the cave with them. It works. It makes you feel like you're one of the divers on this expedition.

It tries to show you the unpleasant and the pleasantness of underwater cave diving. It works. The script was written by the leader of a cave diving expedition which was the inspiration of Sanctum. James Cameron didn't want a script writer without experience of the subject, neither did Alister Grierson.

But the script... Oh dear god! That was terrible. Cliched and rubbish are two words to describe it. The acting worked some of the time, but it just mainly fails. The characters are boring but Ioan Gruffurd's character is the worst.

His character, Carl Hurley is just badly sketched. The pacing was too slow. It's only about half the length of Avatar, but it felt much longer than it. When Frank was dying, I had to go to the toilet.

I was there for about 2 minutes. When I came back, he was still dying and one minute later he died. If you want to watch the movie, remember to look, not to listen.