Sanctum
Short description
Sanctum follows a team of cave divers exploring a vast underwater cave system in the South Pacific, led by experienced diver Frank McGuire. Among the group are his teenage son Josh and Carl Hurley, the wealthy financier backing the expedition. When a tropical storm floods the caves and seals off their route to the surface, the team is trapped below. With supplies running low, they must find a way through the submerged labyrinth and reach the sea before it is too late.
The film was directed by Alister Grierson, the second of the two features he has made, released in 2011 between Sanctum and Bloody Hell (2020). Andrew Wight and John Garvin wrote the screenplay, with Wight producing alongside Michael Finley. Richard Roxburgh plays Frank, Ioan Gruffudd plays Carl, and Rhys Wakefield plays Josh.
Produced on a budget of 30 million US dollars, the film took about 109 million US dollars worldwide, a strong return on its cost. Audiences received it modestly: on IMDb it holds 5.9/10 from roughly 59,000 votes, and on TMDB it sits at 6.1/10 from around 1,200 votes. A film critics' rating of 4.5/10 from 171 reviews places it below the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Translated from Latin, 'sanctum' means sacred, and from English, it means sanctuary.
- The film uses the same filming technique as Avatar.
- The film is based on a real event that happened to Andrew White, the co-writer of the screenplay. Once, Andrew and 14 other people were cave diving when the entrance to their cave collapsed. For two days, Andrew and the other divers searched for another way out.
- The verses recited by Frank (Richard Roxburgh): “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea,” are the first stanzas of the poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream” (1797).
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
