Movie Review: As Above, So Below

John Erick Dowdle (Quarantine) takes us on a journey to hell and back in As Above, So Below.

Scarlett (Perdita Weeks, The Invisible Woman) is the daughter of a famous anthropologist (no, not Indiana Jones), and is following in his footsteps.  She's adventurous and super smart.  Seriously, she speaks four modern languages, two dead ones, has multiple phds, and is even a black belt in some form of martial arts.  It was a bit overkill for the story, but that's a minor quibble.  In this film she is searching for the infamous Philosopher's Stone.  She teams up with Harry Potter and.....no, wrong story.  Through a little bit of detective work she finds out that it is buried somewhere beneath the city of Paris.  There are catacombs running all throughout the underground of Paris where 6 million people were buried a couple hundred years ago (true story).  The tunnels are a tourist place now, but Scarlett has discovered that there may be a hidden chamber where the stone is now residing.  She gets together a group to go down and help her find it with the promise of treasure.  While down there, they pass an entry that is the supposed gateway to Hell, where they each have to face their inner demons and fight their way back to the surface. Who will survive?

This film is being sold as a horror, and it is for the last half.  The whole first half is something different though.  It is more of a National Treasure/Davinci Code type of movie.  We watch her as she finds clues to the whereabouts of the Philosopher's Stone by sneaking into museums, finding hidden clues, checking the maps.  This worked for me though.  I love those kinds of movies, and this one had a story that held my interest pretty well.  Then when the group gets into the catacombs, we get the horror movie we thought we were going to see.  It is horror set in tunnels and caves, so do we get all the clichés?  Yeah.  Someone falling down long hole?  Check.  Someone getting stuck?  Yep.  A broken bone? Sure.  The difference for me was that they established a good story in the beginning of the film.  The filmmakers kept that story going throughout the last half, and used it to deal with a couple of the clichés in what I thought were interesting ways.  I thought overall the story was a strong point.  It's like The Goonies as a horror movie.

A weak point was the filming style.  It's found footage.  Yes, there are some good examples of found footage movies out there, but I'm just kind of tired of it as a whole.  I will give this one points for implementing the structure better than most.  Scarlett has a man named Benji (Edwin Hodge, The Purge: Anarchy) documenting her journey as she uncovers clues.  When they go down into the catacombs he has a little camera installed on everyone's headlamps, so the story can logically be shown from the viewpoint of any of the characters.  You were never left wondering where a camera was or why it would be there.  The problem I have with the found footage, is movement.  When someone is running through the caves, or worse yet, falling, you just get a blurred image on screen.  It gets hard to tell what is going on when this is happening.  This didn't get real bad too often, but it was enough to be a little distracting here and there.  It also really limits the shot choices for the film, which I suppose is why a lot of horror directors use it.  It's got to be a pretty cheap alternative to traditional camera work.

The acting was just alright, but the characters developed well enough.  I actually liked a few of them, which is good for a horror film, because you want to care enough to not see them get hurt.  Weeks did a solid job of the gung-ho lead of the film.  Ben Feldman (Cloverfield) played her translator friend George.  He was the whiny one that didn't want to be there in the first place that you usually can't stand in these kind of films.  How he ended up going with them when he didn't want to was a little forced, but it was handled better than most.  Even being the whiny one, he was still likeable.  Francois Civil (Frank) was their personal tour guide, Papillon, and also the comic relief.  I thought he did a great job.  Those were the three personalities that really stuck out at all.  The other couple of characters were still likeable, but ultimately forgettable.

I have to admit, I went in not expecting much more than a generic horror.  What I got was a historical mystery adventure with some supernatural horror thrown in.  I could have done without found footage, and the acting was fine, but not great.  The story kept it interesting though, and there was plenty of tension during the last half of the film in the caves.  This film was a pleasant surprise.

Rating: ******---- (6 out of 10)

Memorable Quote:

George (translating): Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.