![]() Have you ever screamed in a cavern? The echo is usually quite impressive and diffuse sounding. Considering the location of the film, one would assume that the surround effects would be the most impressive part of the mix, and while they are very good, they don't get the done job from an immersive perspective. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is the best part of the transfer clear and intelligible dialogue (too bad none of it is very interesting), strong LFE content, and a really engaging score to tie things together. Passable but not reference quality at all. I can only assume that a lot of work was during post to make it all pop off the screen, which is why it sucks that it looks so fake. It starts off quite strong in the first segment of the film but it doesn't look real from a depth perspective. The 3D or lack of it, is the most disappointing part of the transfer. The best parts of the film from an image perspective are the underwater shots which (PADI certified diver I am.Yoda voice) look very natural kudos for getting the lighting right. DNR isn't applied too liberally and that's fine from my perspective. Most of the shots are close-ups or midrange and you can make out more than enough detail. The outdoor shots at the beginning of the film are fine, but once the camera disappears into the tight spaces below the surface, the detail and clarity suffer. ![]() ![]() The color palette is muted, and nothing really pops off the screen - not even in 3D. Black levels range from excellent with decent levels of shadow detail present to very average which is really disappointing in a film that takes place inside a cave. The Blu-ray 3D isn't a terrible transfer by any stretch of the imagination it's clearly one of the better looking live action films in 3D so far, but it's also remarkably inconsistent. It is a sad statement for the film industry when $30 million can't produce a great looking product. 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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