Starring: Richard Roxburgh, Alice Parkinson, Rhys Wakefield, Dan Wyllie, Christopher Baker and Allison Cratchley
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Runtime: 109 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2011
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Sanctum follows the story of a team of underwater cave divers, on an expedition in Papua New Guinea to the most beautiful, unexplored and least accessible cave system in the world. The leader is Frank McGuire (Richard Roxburgh), a single-minded master explorer. He has an awkward relationship with his 17-year-old son Josh (Rhys Wakefield). Josh is participating under protest. Also on the journey is the man underwriting the expedition, billionaire Carl Hurley (Ioan Gruffudd). When a tropical storm arrives suddenly, their only exit is cut off in a flash flood and they are forced to move forward deeper into the cave. With ever-dwindling lights and supplies, they must navigate the treacherous terrain and raging water, in search of an unknown escape route to the sea. But the cave is unforgiving of mistakes and soon they are each confronted with the unavoidable question – will any of them make it out alive?
The double meaning of the word sanctum is intelligently applied here. It’s most obvious meaning in a disaster film is self-evident: finding a haven of safety and security. Its other more spiritual meaning refers to a holy place, a space within which one touches upon the transcendent. For many people nature is an important element in their experience of the Numinous. This latter idea is invoked in the Sanctum by the magnificence of the physical beauty we see on the screen, but it is also explicitly outlined by Frank when he describes the vast underwater chambers as “my Cathedral”. In fact, and rather prophetically, he names a newly discovered space, “The Cathedral of St Jude”.
Sanctum is visually stunning; though I am not sure the increasingly obligatory 3D production added much. It is also genuinely tense and at time shocking. Some viewers need to know that some of the violence in the story, which is entirely appropriate for explorers fighting for their lives, is very explicit indeed.
The problems in Sanctum, however, are serious. The plot for any disaster film is usually thin, but here it is wafer-thin. What is especially poorly realised is the father/son drama, which ends up being so central to the story. The dialogue is sometimes so clumsy and didactic as to turn dramatic moments into comic ones.
Richard Roxburgh is a very fine actor but in director Alister Grierson’s hands his Frank McGuire starts out a cranky, growling anti-hero and stays on that pitch for almost the entire film. For a man of his experience he also makes some stupid decisions that weaken the plot. The rest of the cast runs to type: a laconic Aussie who gets the best lines, two Americans, one self-obsessed and the other an idiot, and Josh, the moody teen who hates Dad and seems to have inherited some of his stupidity by not realising how important extra air tanks might be down a 1km cave.
This superbly-crafted disaster film, with such an original setting for the drama, could have been so much better.
The sanctum of every fine film is not just the way it looks, but believable and nuanced characters delivering a polished script. This film ended up a long way short of a transcendent experience.
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