From producer James Cameron comes a survivalist adventure about a team of adrenalin junky/explorers who find themselves trapped in a deep, uncharted cave system in the South Pacific. Sanctum is one of those films that should be 100 times more intense than it actually is, and the entire time I sat there in the theater watching it, I couldn't help but recall Neil Marshall's exceptional The Descent (a film that Sanctum is being compared to). Trust me when I tell you, there is no comparison. And it has nothing do with the monster aspect to The Descent either. Even before the monsters show up in that film, The Descent pulsates with a kind of tension that Sanctum could only dream to have. This is by no fault of Sanctum's creative team. The sets and under water footage are impressive, but the unsure direction, pedestrian dialogue (which borders on laughable), and the awful performance by Ioan Gruffudd virtually drown the film. Cameron employs the same 3D technology used on Avatar (and to its credit, the 3D is pretty effective), but the terrible writing here actually made me yearn for the sub par writing in Avatar. Sanctum! It nearly killed him!