sanctum

Sanctum

Directed by: Alister Grierson

Produced by: Ben Browning, Leesa Kahn, Ryan Kavanaugh, Michael Maher, Brett Popplewell, Peter Rawlinson, Aaron Ryder, Andrew Wight.

Executive Producer: James Cameron

Starring: Richard Roxburgh, Rhys Wakefield, Alice Parkinson, Daniel Wyllie, Ioan Gruffudd

Music by: David Hirschfeld. The whole soundtrack of sanctum motion picture is made by David Hirschfeld, consisting of 18 songs. The soundtrack was release on February 1, 2011.

The Synopsis

Sanctum is the story of a team of cave explorer making an underwater cave exploration in Esa’ala cave, Papua New Guinea. The team has been exploring the cave for months and has been able to set up a forward base camp at the lower levels of the underwater cave with an impressive communication network that allows communication between the surface and lower camps. The team consists of Frank McGuire, Josh McGuire, Victoria, Carl Hurley, Judes, Luko, and George. A series of unfortunate events struck the team starting with the death of Judes after she and Frank decided to explore the Devil’s restriction, an unexplored part of the underwater cave, Judes hose snaps after squeezing through a narrow passage, without a backup tank, she panicked and fail to complete the buddy breathe routine with Frank. A storm than came on the surface and causing water to pour viciously into the mouth of the cave, a few of the team in the forward base camp was instructed to get to the surface but, Josh and Luko decided to came back and warn the people who were left back at the forward base camp. In their effort to help, disaster strikes and Luko hurt himself bad and later die after a mercy killing done by Frank as there is no way out of the cave, and it was to ease the passing of Luko so that he doesn’t have to suffer much longer. Then, after another few series of unfortunate incidents the team lost George and Victoria too. Frank, Josh and Carl were the only ones left, Carl was saddened by the lost of his girlfriend Victoria decided to bail on Frank and josh by taking the last breathing tank left and went to find for an escape route alone, Frank and Josh tried to chase and stop him, but they failed. Frank and Josh braced themselves and continued searching for an escape route on their own. Eventually, they found a way out but there are other challenges in order to go through. They found a nearly half insane Carl along the way, Carl beg for help but Frank and Josh left him behind because of his betrayal. Carl lost control of himself and attacked Frank, they fought with each other until Carl impales Frank onto a stalagmite, puncturing Frank’s lungs and then left Josh with his dying father. Frank had no chance of surviving so he requested to be mercy killed by his son Josh. Although Josh refuses to do it in the first place, he finally agrees and was able to get the job done with a huge pain in his heart. Josh continues to find the way out but this time on his own and the last breathing tank which was left by Carl. Along the way, Josh founds Carl’s body, dead due to the lack of oxygen. After running out of light and oxygen, Josh uses air bubbles which were trapped on the cave ceiling. On the verge of giving up, Josh sees sunlight ahead and swims vigorously to the surface, resurfacing in the Solomon sea and swims to the shore safely.

The review

The movie sanctum can be described as an adventurous movie. However, the movie is not as interesting as it should be. Although with the help of award winning director James Cameron as its executive producer the film somehow has lack in dynamics and awe factor for the audience. Add to the fact that the line of infamous actors playing the lead role making the movie less interesting. Nonetheless, there are some aspects of the movie that I admire. I admire how the film demonstrates survival skills which were brilliantly portrayed by the character of Frank and Josh McGuire. Both of the characters in the movie also shows the struggles and the misunderstanding between father and son, and how they finally able to get on the same page before Frank McGuire imminent death. All in all, this movie shows that the Australian movie scene is improving in the sense of its technology in the sense of its motion and imagery quality. But, I rate this movie poorly for its lack of dynamics and the uninteresting plot and story line.