IT CAME OUT in February, but it’s clearly a January movie. Despite the lure of Avatar-style 3D magic promised by Sanctum’s name-above-the-title producer James Cameron, director Alister Grierson’s film is a true bait and switch. The 1,000-pecent-on-the-level tone of the advertisements reveals a movie so laden with CGI that watching it is like eating a sandwich with the plastic wrap still on.
There is an element of truth to the story. A few years back, some Ausralian spelunkers were trapped in a cave by rising waters. They had to venture forward for two days to find the way out via a subterranean river. Unfortunately, even the complicated 3D second-unit work makes the caves in Australia’s Mt. Gambier National Park look like plaster lagoons.
The simple problem: We’re not invested emotionally even in tried-and-true themes. Fictionally transplanted to New Guinea, the cave expedition partners a hotdog millionaire, Carl (Ioan Gruffudd), and a case-hardened spelunker, Frank (Australian tele-hunk Richard Roxburgh); Frank’s son, Josh (Rhys Wakefield), is starting to rebel against Dad. Tagging along is the millionaire’s girlfriend Victoria; she’s played by Alice Parkinson, possibly cast because of a striking resemblance to Sigourney Weaver.
The dialogue ranges from the kind of groan-worthy gags they print on cocktail napkins to, bizarrely, a Yakov Smirnoff joke: Victoria is described as “strong like bull and smart like tractor,” which isn’t too far off, considering her stubbornness. We’re not persuaded, either, by Frank’s contention that it’s only 1,000 feet underground where he can really be himself, anymore than we can handle his thinly veiled rebuke to the audience for not having the stones to be spelunkers: “You spend your lives wrapped in cotton wool!”
Sanctum works overtime, selling us on the importance of spelunking instead of making us feel the fascination of what is basically a leisure activity. During this long soak in the studio tank (one flashes on flooded basements and colonoscopy videos), we’re not persuaded by the importance of being the first to see a pristine cave. No matter who you are, if you’re seeing something for the first time, you might as well be the first person in the world to see it. But there’s no new style here in filmmaking to convey that sense of wonder.—Richard von Busack
R; 109 min.
