SANCTUM

Review: Sanctum
2 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

You've seen “Sanctum” before, only it was called “The Poseidon Adventure” or “Daylight” or “Deep Blue Sea.” The key difference is those movies each had at least one likable character. This Australian action production, about a team of explorers trapped in a network of underground caves, features a rogues gallery of archetypes ranging from unsympathetic to outright unbearable. Without a soul to cheer for, it's exceedingly difficult to look past the B-movie acting and the F-movie screenplay, written by real-life divers John Garvin and, inspiring the story with his own experiences, Andrew Wight. Garvin and Wight are chums with beneath-the-surface obsessive James Cameron, who funded the project and supplied the 3-D cameras. But consulting and creating are two wholly different disciplines, and these two adventurers were apparently as fit to pen Cameron's new spectacle as a certain blind pianist was to write the script for “Ray.”

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