(The movie also has a scene of an eel attack, and that’s scary.)Īlas, the cinematographer of 'Sanctum,' Jules O’Loughlin, consistently touches the side of the screen. Let me give a famous example from 'Jaws 3D.' The problem with that movie is that when the shark attacked, it was so big, its body touched the sides of the screen, and the 3-D illusion was lost. One way to do this is to avoid violating the fourth wall by seeming to touch it.

One purpose of 3-D is to create the illusion of depth. Now why put on a pair of glasses and turn down the lights? The lighting apparently comes from battery-powered headlamps, and the characters are half in darkness and half in gloom. 'Sanctum' takes place in claustrophobic spaces with very low lighting, which are the last places you want to make look dimmer than they already are. The movie is a case study in how not to use 3-D. Hey, I can do stuff like that on my Mac, and then my hair is parted on the other side! The animated map even flips on its horizontal axis, apparently to show off. In 'Sanctum,' there’s a computer animation showing the known parts of the cave, but as the POV whizzes through caverns and tunnels, it achieves only a demonstration of computer animation itself. That was a great help in comprehending the events of the ship’s final hour. If you recall Cameron’s ' Titanic,' its helpful early animation briefed us on the entire story of how the great ship sank. At no point are we oriented on our location in the cave as a whole, or have a clear idea of what the current cave space looks like. 'Sanctum' should be studied in film classes as an example of inadequate film continuity. I only wanted to figure out what was happening, and where, and why.

Still, tactical errors are not what concerned me. They are combining dangerous climbing with risky diving, and it’s a good question why an inexperienced girlfriend was allowed to come along. There’s no need to discover this, you understand, but after some loss of life, Frank ( Richard Roxburgh), the leader of the expedition, tells son Josh ( Rhys Wakefield) that only in a cave does he feel fully alive the humdrum surface world is not for him, and 'human eyes have never seen this before.'Īfter awkward opening scenes of almost startling inanity, we find ourselves deep inside the cave system, and our heroes deep in trouble.

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