Not so far from the shores of Neverland, another story of a father and son emerges in Sanctum (Grierson 2011a), a survival thriller in which a team of cave divers becomes trapped when a cyclonic storm floods a cave in Papua New Guinea (PNG). PNG lies across the Torres Strait to the north of Far North Queensland in the Pacific region. PNG is a peripheral setting and did not supply any locations for Sanctum. Dive locations were scouted in Vanuatu, Puerto Rico, Yucatan, Australia and PNG, according to Andrew Wight (in Grierson 2011b), before the decision was taken to film in studio sets on the Gold Coast. Second unit footage of Mt Gambier and Narracoorte Caves, South Australia, and some exteriors shot on Dunk Island, North Queensland, evokes the above-ground spectacle of the cave and the setting of PNG.

The setting of Sanctum is reminiscent of the South Seas films of the 1930s and 1950s discussed by Landman (2006; 2013). These films are distinguished by settings on the fringes of northern Australia in the Torres Strait Islands and PNG, and involved a significant amount of location production, either in the places named, or elsewhere, including islands of the Great Barrier Reef. Landman describes the South Seas films as ‘“colonial resource adventures”’ where the Torres Strait Islands and PNG form an ‘exotic backdrop’ to the colonial masculine adventures (2013, 202–3). In the corpus of South Seas films, she argues, the spectacle is one of ‘scenic melodrama’ (2006, 118) and the Indigenous people are marginalised, or even disavowed. The films convey a spirit of adventure and imperial romance in the narratives and the locationism of the productions in perceived frontier spaces. Landman discusses these films in two groups, first, the interwar films, including Lovers and Luggers (Hall 1937), Jungle Woman (Hurley 1926b) and Hound of the Deep (Hurley 1926a). In Lovers and Luggers, the setting was created with back projection of footage shot in locations. These films, she contends, present ‘trials of imperial masculine identity’ in narratives that reflect Australia's negotiation of its subordinate or dominion relationship with Britain (Landman 2006, 158). She compares three of the post–World War II South Seas films, including King of the Coral Sea (Robinson 1954) and Walk into Paradise (Robinson and Pagliero 1956).