Cave Diver

Underwater cave explorer Rob Nash is a mess, both mental and financial. His descent from caving diving’s golden boy to community pariah was both abrupt and shattering. His wife Natalie died in the depths of a submerged cavern in Western Australia. Was it a tragic accident or something more sinister? Nash has been pilloried in the press, hounded by reporters demanding answers he can’t – or won’t – give them, and threatened with a civil action by Natalie’s grieving family.

Nash is grieving too, blaming himself for his failure to save Natalie’s life. He’s lost sponsorship deals, been forced to pull out of expeditions and looks likely to lose his home as well as his livelihood. On top of all that, his sister, one of the few to have stuck by him, has just told him she’s been diagnosed with cancer.

When an old family friend, Frank Douglas, offers him a way out of his problems, Nash is dubious at first, but allows himself to be persuaded to take a job working with a film crew making a documentary in Papua New Guinea featuring a cave diving site that for many is the Holy Grail of underwater exploration. The location is the mysterious Hoosenbeck cavern, a supposedly bottomless lake inside a huge cave at the end of a deep, remote river gorge in an area of inaccessible rainforest, turned into a no-go area by warring guerilla factions since the cave was first discovered in the 1960s.

With the publicity surrounding the recent release of Ron Howard’s film Thirteen Lives, telling the story of the successful Thai cave rescue in 2018, a thriller with the title Cave Diver is bound to attract attention. Anyone brought up on a diet of Clive Cussler and Wilbur Smith, is likely to find this an appealing romp through inhospitable terrain, with our hero braving a dangerous river, local tribes who not unnaturally take exception to the river version of a hit-and-run, and multiple villainous types all with their own hidden agendas and shifting loyalties.

It’s classic Boys’ Own Adventure stuff, with a handsome, square-jawed hero who exudes the classic cliché of a ‘primal attraction’ with women (even of the non-swooning heroine variety) flocking to him. Thrown in to spice things up are some very bad baddies and, naturally, a dangerous hunt for lost wartime treasure.

There’s plenty of excitement and intrigue, along with some decent action sequences, but the cave diving scenes that I’d hope to see at the heart of the story play second fiddle to a lengthy build-up and never really get the focus needed to show Rob Nash in his element. He’s schlepping around almost as much mental baggage as he is weighed down out of the water by all his diving kit and I found it hard to warm to him. He’s about as far from the real heroes of the cave diving world as it’s possible to be, and the Dirk Pitt style of thriller hero has never really floated my boat, despite some binge reading on caving holidays (hush, don’t judge me).

A little less playing to stereotypes would have helped as well, but that aside, there were some genuinely tense moments in the finale. I’d need to consult my many friends who’ve caved in Papua New Guinea for the accuracy of the descriptions of the landscape and the geopolitical situation in the region, although I certainly found that side of things interesting, so go ahead, suspend disbelief and come on in – the water is anything but lovely!