Sanctum (2011) Dir: Alister Grierson

You know when you get the urge to do something really adventurous? It strikes from time to time, when the grim reality of my own pointless existence hits home and I think I need to do something, anything just to spice things up a little.
Well, here's my advice: Don't go fucking caving.
The plot: With a cyclone closing in fast, a group of cave explorers find themselves trapped in the bowels of the Papua New Guinean Earth, their only hope for survival being to find a way through the unexplored section of the cave system in the hope of locating an exit.
With a father and son in the team who really don't like each other too much, and the same father and his boss who seem to like each other even less, expect plenty of emotional over-wroughtness and testosterone fulled rantings.
And the only question is not whether they will survive, but how many of them will die along the way.
Essentially, this is after all a movie about a bunch of people wandering around in a cave, so you may feel that it will struggle for legs but the energy of the on screen action keeps the momentum flowing just nicely. Whilst the characterisations are a tad on the thin side, the writers at least have a go and are partially successful, as the leader of the expedition is massively engaging; brash, abrasive, utterly focused on what needs to be done, an automaton in a wetsuit, whilst his boss is perhaps one of the most dislikable characters in movie history; handsome, successful, confident, physically fit.
Seriously, he made me want to puke.
Jamews Cameron's name tag remains something of a mystery, save for the obvious financial gain such a label will bring, and the 3D is utterly redundant but, those issues aside, this is an efficient enough 'will they escape the calamity' movie in the mould of The Poseidon Adventure.
Not as bad as many would have you believe.

3 out of 5

Feed (2005) Dir: Brett Leonard

Uuuuurrrrgggggh.
That was vile.
The plot: Cyber-cop Alex O'Loughlin from Sydney, Australia, uses the latest technology to track down cyber-criminals, tracing their IP addresses to prosecute them for their crimes. We join him as he and his partner are on the trail of a particularly nasty individual, webmaster and owner of Feederx.com, a website dedicated to streaming apparently live footage of very large ladies being slowly fed to death, though voluntarily, by a tattooed male, whose proclivities include getting them to beg for their food whilst he, erm, rubs himself rather vigorously until his back starts to judder.
O'Loughlin traces the router the traffic is sent from, and pins the location to Ohio, US of A, and it isn't too long before, against the advice of his partner and the express wishes of his boss, he's in an altogether different time-zone, tracking the perverted son of a corn dog down.
So, essentially it's a cop on the trail of bad guy movie, but this is an altogether nastier animal than, say Se7en, the focus here more on the females' willingness to be ritually humiliated.
If Saw and Hostel are torture porn, then this is calorie porn, as the director points a camera lovingly in the direction of the bulky matter the deluded lasses happily chow down upon, some of the concoctions fit to turn the stomach of most rationale creatures.
What makes this movie all the more disturbing is that it is based on a real phenomena, men known as Feeders fattening up emotionally vulnerable women to the point that they become bed-ridden and utterly dependent on the one that did them the harm in the first place. It's the flipside of anorexia, I guess, psychologically speaking, though even more complex an issue.
At times brutal, at times emotional, this is surprisingly well crafted for a low-budget flick, and a low-budget flick from Oz, what's more.
Forgive the pun, but you'll need a strong stomach for this nasty offering and, seriously, you will never look at a burger in the same light again.

4 out of 5
Favourite line: "Consumption Is Evolution"