Cameron's 3-D Thriller Sanctum Is All Wet

Critics disagree over whether Sanctum, executive-produced by James Cameron, looks good on the screen—but they agree that nothing else about it is too impressive.

• The film may be “the high-type 3-D” rather than converted 2-D, but “the characters, the dialogue, the water-based peril—the stuff the 3-D is supposed to be supporting in the name of racking our nerves—well, Sanctum has problems with those,” writes Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune.

• "Sanctum tells the story of a terrifying adventure in an incompetent way,” declares Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. It “should be studied in film classes as an example of inadequate film continuity” and is “a case study in how not to use 3-D.”
• In the New York Daily News, Joe Neumaier says the film “looks sharp, though the 3-D is wasted except for a scene in a tunnel. The acting, meanwhile, is stuck in one dimension.”

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