However, the two films had very different budgets depending on who you believe Cameron spent close to $300 million on Avatar (give or take a few hundred million), and Sanctum ran a few shekels under $30 million. It wasn't unreasonable to expect that the 3D image would benefit from the expertise of James Cameron who really set the bar extremely high with Avatar. Most disappointing film of the year for me so far.Ĭonsidering the source, Sanctum was a huge letdown when it opened in theaters. The location of the film is breathtaking it's just too bad that you have to hold your breath watching it in 3D.

The film's dialogue isn't any worse than most of the garbage coming out of Hollywood these days, so it's hard to get bogged down on that issue. He even cries hysterically when (SPOILER ALERT) his girlfriend plummets to her death, so it's hard to get excited when (SPOILER ALERT #2) the lone surviving member of the team swims past his drowned corpse. Is he intensely annoying with his video camera? Absolutely. Does he have some evil plan concocted to screw over the surviving members of the team? Nah.

Does he make an effort to be a team player for most of the story? Sure. Notwithstanding the film's poor use of 3D, its biggest crime was that the bad guy, billionaire playboy Carl (Ioan Gruffudd), wasn't really that bad. The film lost money domestically and if not for the foreign box office, it would have been a major loser at the box office. Director Alister Grierson delivered a cross between The Descent and Deep Blue Sea. The studio deserves some of the blame for this dreadful film because it played up the 'James Cameron' angle so much that people were expecting a cross between the Abyss (the greatest underwater film ever made) and Avatar. Karen Dahlstom's review of Sanctum pretty much hit the stalagmite on the head, but I disagree with her on one point there was some suspense - It was suspenseful waiting to see how all of the annoying characters were going to die.

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