Sanctum (2011)

Sanctum is a 2011 3D adventure drama film directed by Alister Grierson and executive produced by James Cameron.

17-year-old Josh (Rhys Wakefield), expedition bank-roller Carl Hurley (Ioan Gruffudd) and his girlfriend Victoria (Alice Parkinson) travel by helicopter to the Esa'ala Cave, an underwater cave exploration site in Papua New Guinea.

Upon reaching the cave it is made known that Frank McGuire (Richard Roxburgh), Josh's father and a master diver, has already set up a forward base camp at a low level inside the cave. The team has been exploring the cave system for months, and have set up an excellent communication network that allows communication between the surface and the lower camp. Victoria and Josh rappel down the cave, while Carl dives and parachutes into it, winning a bet that he would reach the base camp before Josh and Victoria.

While the guests get comfortable, Frank and diver Judes (Allison Cratchley) decide to explore an unexplored section of the cave known as Devil's Restriction. Squeezing through a narrow passage they reach a giant cavern with huge ceilings, but while they are returning, Judes' hose snaps. With no backup tank, Frank offers Judes his full face diving mask to buddy breathe. After exchanging the mask twice, Judes begins to panic and refuses to return it to Frank. Frank reluctantly grabs it and pushes her away so that he can breathe, and Judes dies in front of his eyes. The entire action is captured and witnessed by the members of the forward base through the rover trailing the divers.

Josh accuses Frank of murdering Judes, while the others try to convince him that Frank took heroic risks in attempting to help her. Frank tells Josh that Judes knew the risks, and that Josh was responsible in part for the accident since he failed to procure the backup tanks.

Meanwhile, a fierce storm develops on the surface, and attempts by the surface team to warn the divers fail. Unaware of the storm, some of the divers decide to return to the surface where they encounter water gushing in. Josh and Luko (Cramer Cain) refuse to escape without warning the dive team.

During the escape Luko is badly injured and Frank drowns him in a mercy killing. Frank asks Victoria to use Judes' suit but she refuses. As a result, her body becomes cold. Later, George (Daniel Wyllie), Frank's friend, suffers from decompression sickness and stays behind so that he will not slow down the group. While they cross a gorge in the cave, Victoria finds it difficult to grasp the rope. When Carl shines a torch in her face to see if she is fine, she loses her foothold and trips. Her hair becomes trapped in the equipment. Despite Frank's warnings, she uses her knife, unknowingly cuts the rope, falls into the churning waters below, and dies. The divers lose all but one rebreather in the accident. The teams regroup and decide to rest. Frank explains that he intends to use the rebreather to dive and find a way to come back for them.

Carl, maddened by grief, suddenly dives in with the last tank and Frank loses him in the cave. Josh happens to find bat droppings and infers that there must be an airway out, because bats cannot swim. The two make their way out and find an opening up to the surface along with a Japanese tank from World War II that crashed through. However, the walls are too steep to climb up. They both decide to find another way through the cave rather than wait to be rescued. As they climb, Josh asks his father to teach him the poem "Kubla Khan", from which he often quotes. They find a crazed Carl along with Judes' horrific rotting corpse which had been taken there by the current. Carl begs for help but is left behind because of his betrayal. In desperation, Carl attacks Frank and fatally injures him by impaling him on some minor stalagmites, puncturing Frank's lungs, before diving back into the cave without a tank in hope of finding a way out.

Frank begs Josh to mercy-kill him, which Josh does after some hesitation. Josh dives and continues to swim on a single tank. As he swims, he sees Carl who has died due to lack of oxygen. When his light dies, he uses the light in the boar tooth his father gave him. Finally the tank runs out of air and Josh, remembering his father's words, uses air bubbles trapped on the cave ceiling and continues ahead. Finally exhausted and on the verge of giving up, Josh sees sunlight ahead and breaks the surface, emerging in the Solomon Sea and swims to a nearby beach, where a mother with two children takes care of him.

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