Sanctum

One star because seeing fellow trained professionals who may or may not have lost their lives as just ‘a mistake’ and something to be dismissed without acknowledging the characters made split second decisions based on years of education including rescue as the first of professional diving requirements. This also made it upsetting seeing a child learn this training by the world around him, instead of guidance by not just the dad but even the numerous trained professionals present not making death a talked about thing in any diving scenario, especially cave diving. Second star because all the diving techniques, advanced technical diving decompression a normal thing from start to finish. Well done. The only mistakes I can really see are real world problems like his decision to dive rebreather and not side-mount like most of us do to make getting through gaps a charm, especially with all that chunky facemask with comms and all the other gear loaded on them when people like Mr Cousteau and his buddies were doing butt-naked with regulators from car engines, zero understanding of partial pressure and decompression, down to 60+ metres (a lot of feet). Our late friend Dave Shaw was seen duct-taping his rebreather and self engineering to enable him to break multiple world records in 08’, including the record of 270m - (a butt-load of feet for a human not encased in metal). Therefore, this means that anyone with enough money can get their hands on this highly advanced equipment and have all training necessary within a year or two, without even using it in the ocean in some cases (way harder). Oh well, as the other rescue divers know, always be ready to assist, and make a priority of positive reinforcement as to help get them back down as soon as possible before time sinking the fears in. It breaks hearts seeing beloved members of our tiny community go! 2 stars Cameron.

This movie is awesome. Are the performances terrible? Yes. Is the writing bad, yes. But is it a great movie, yes! It's just the Descent but underwater cave diving. What more could you ask for? This movie is not trying to be anything more than it is. It seems like it's goal was to show some of the worst nightmare scenarios for cave diving, and it did that to an insane level. If you need a movie to have good writing and performances, then you'll struggle to get through this, but if you can get past that and enjoy this movie for what it is, then its a great time.

It's visually pleasing, has a few good scenes and some genuinely harrowing sequences but overall, Sanctum is a forgettable thriller with boring characters, shallow drama, bad acting and uninteresting script. Definitely the weakest film I've I've seen that has "James Cameron" and "water" in the same sentence, though given the fact that he was only an executive producer on this flick, he probably had no meaningful involvement in the final product. Probably due to be being busy trying to convert Titanic into 3D. But you really think Universal wasn't going to take that opportunity to slap the "Titanic" and "Avatar" connection all over the film's marketing? Oh well, whatever gets me my Cameron fix whilst waiting for Avatar 3, which apparently, did not want to compete against another movie with a blue CGI protagonist, I guess...say, that Dark Angel show has been sitting on my DVD shelf for months. Wonder what it was like for Cameron to make a TV show.

I'm genuinely confused why this movie was reviewed so poorly. It's a survival movie about the many risks and causes of deaths involved with cave diving, so I don't understand why people were expecting some Christopher Nolan type of plot. I was on the edge of my seat the entire movie and the scenes showing how massive the cave was were visually stunning. The death scenes will haunt my nightmares for years to come. If you like survival movies this is a must see. The only part that made zero sense to me was at the end when one of the friends turns on the group as if they were in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Other than that great movie!

Great Visuals, Nice Suspense, Good Acting. HAMMY SCRIPT and crappy screenwriting. Mixing Good with the Bad.

Pathetic. But why...why do they have to smash our balls with father-son crap? Jesus.

best caving movie i've seen yet. terrifying to watch former friends become bitter enemies as flooding cave claims more and more lives. to me, it was more exciting than the more popular "the descent" which was also very good.

"STOP RIGHT THERE, CARL, YOU KNOW THAT'S DAMNED CRAZY!!" Imagine Fry and Laurie had been commissioned to script an underwater disaster movie and you'll get the measure of this 3D hokum. Every cliché is polished and served up: a father and son who need to forgive each other; a charmer who is revealed as a cad; and that staple of all disaster movies - a variety of deaths to the lowest billed actors. EVERYONE SHOUTS BECAUSE, BY GOD, THE STAKES ARE UNBELIEVABLY HIGH, CARL, GODDAMMIT.

Cave movies are underrated. Most of them have ranged from being good to excellent (The Descent). Sanctum is closer to the latter thankfully. Sanctum is loosely based on an experience of co-screenwriter Andrew Wight, although the details have been amplified to fit the movie experience. It's about the survival struggle of five characters who become trapped by a flood deep beneath the earth in New Guinea's Esa-ala caves while exploring deep underwater pockets and trenches. The strength of the film lies in its ability to wring tension from even seemingly mundane circumstances. After all, this is essentially a movie about characters climbing through dark spaces and diving deep under water. Nevertheless, the sense of danger and urgency rarely lets up, even when the end is (apparently) in sight. This is a good 90-minute excursion into a treacherous situation and you will enjoy the time.

Although this is a pretty bad movie, I gotta say I am giving this a tomato because I used to watch this on repeat all the time as a young lad