Sanctum: Critic Reviews

A lean, clear-headed 3-D thriller that knows exactly where it's headed from the moment its adrenaline junkie explorers dive into the world's biggest cave in Papua New Guinea.

The director Alister Grierson, not grasping that bad dialogue is sometimes best delivered quietly, encourages his actors to shout and thrash about, and so they do, like fish out of water and performers out of their depth.

It's ruthless, claustrophobic and rather less fun than the 1959 version of Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

It's a reasonable film, unpretentious in its way.

Actually being stuck in a remote waterlogged grotto might be more tolerable than enduring this disaster of an adventure movie.

Forget 127 Hours: "Sanctum" makes sawing off your own arm look like a minor penalty for the crime of spelunking while clueless.

What we get are three-dimensional caves and two-dimensional characters.

If you're able to think of characters as just air bubbles to get past, then dive in, the excitement's fine.

No film in recent memory has been so strenuously at war with itself, although for me, a self-confessed sucker for the IMAX brand of eye candy, the images narrowly-as well as widely-carry the day.

The rambling, staggering story line toggles clumsily between depictions of natural disasters and human error and/or treachery without ever hitting anything like a stride...

"Sanctum" tells the story of a terrifying adventure in an incompetent way.

Here and there an image of spectral beauty, assisted by the 3-D technology, floats into view and captures our imagination. But the script, which really should've been called "Sanctimonium," has a serious case of the bends.

After a sluggish half hour, this well-crafted adventure kicks into high gear and never lets up.

With ace underwater photography and scuba-diving stunt doubles, Sanctum doesn't stint on action.

If not for the by-the-numbers script, a slim collection of underdeveloped characters and generally flat acting, the film could have had a real punch.

Really bad acting set against often-stunning cave-wall backdrops and underwater action sequences. Naturally, James Cameron is the executive producer.

A subterranean survival epic that expertly tightens the screws even as one wishes it would keep a tighter mouth-clamp on its increasingly whiny characters.

"Sanctum" turns out to be as gripping as plankton.

Predictable. But the chills and thrills work, and it is gorgeous to look at.

For much of the film, and despite groan-worthy dialogue that often takes you right out of the picture, you'll likely be holding your breath in genuine suspense.

Released over Super Bowl weekend, it makes perfect sense that Sanctum is horrid. What studio expects anyone to go to the theater on Sunday?

Stick that camera down an aquatic cave, wrap a paper-thin plot around it, slap the whole thing up on an IMAX screen and call it a movie. More truth in advertising: Call it a lame movie.

When it isn't killing off its characters one by one during a cave-diving expedition gone wrong, "Sanctum" resembles a Hemingway short story without the story part. Or an episode of "Flipper" without the dolphin.

There's something about an effective "man versus nature" film that gets the blood pumping.

Soggy theatrics render this gorgeously-shot underwater 3D excursion more shrill than thrilling.