As Above, So Below (2014)

Directed by John Eric Dowdle

Viewed on Netflix

 

Summary: An obsessed tomb raider digs through Parisian catacombs to find the Philosopher’s Stone and prove her father right. What she ends up finding is a visually bland and scare-free film that wastes all the potential of the good premise and characters.  

 

This is a movie that really surprised me, not necessarily because of its quality but because of its plot. When this movie originally was released in theatres I vaguely remember seeing the trailer. It looked okay, just a standard found footage movie about people trapped in the Parisian catacombs who run into monsters of some kind. But when I watched the movie, I learned that this is not at all what the plot was actually about because this movie is actually about a woman searching the Parisian catacombs for the Philosopher’s Stone, a mystical item created by Nicholas Flamel, that according to alchemical legend has incredible powers. I have no idea why this is obscured, as the trailer that I just rewatched makes absolutely no mention of this plot and goes to great pains to edit around any mention of the stone or alchemy. Why was the studio so ashamed of what this movie was about? Well, let’s find out as we explore As Above, So Below!

Let me say right off the bat that I don’t dislike the plot. It starts off really neat by having the main character, Scarlett Marlowe, sneak into an Iranian town so she can try and find an archeological treasure before it is destroyed. Scarlett manages to, with the help of a local who knew her father, find the item and photograph it before it is destroyed, preserving the information etched into it. With that in hand, Scarlett heads to Paris to meet up with a documentarian making a movie about her search for the stone (because we had to justify this being a found footage movie somehow) and try and persuade an old friend to help her find the stone. Eventually they discover the location, but its underground, so they arrange for a small group of Parisians to get them through the catacombs. Once they’re down there though, things immediately go bad, and the group starts experiencing some rather strange phenomena.

It’s nothing too groundbreaking, but I like this plot. It reminds of a B-movie version of Indiana Jones with its combination of mysticism and archaeology and though I can see why that would turn some people off, I like the slight genre-bending that goes on with the search for a magical item. The first whole act is pretty acceptable, setting up a bunch of characters suited for this line of mystical archaeology and pairing them up with a bunch of treasure seeking Parisian misfits whose goals and ideals would certainly clash with the main group’s. So if the characters are good, the plot is good and the setting, catacombs under Paris, is scary, that means the movie is good, right? Well, no.

For each of these good things present there is an equal or greater number of elements here that just don’t work. Even though I liked the characters, as Scarlett in particular is a well thought out and rounded lead, there were signs early on that not everything would be going smoothly. Several scenes emerge where characters spout clumsy exposition to establish their dark and mysterious pasts. One scene has translator guy not want to join the others on the catacomb quest and when the Parisians ask why, Scarlett’s response is, “He is afraid of caves because his little brother drowned in one.” First off, thanks for offering this sensitive information up to the group without consulting him, Scarlett, and secondly, why does he need a reason to be uncomfortable entering abandoned sections of catacombs full of corpses? That’s a reasonable thing to not like! It’s just one of those lines that screams foreshadowing and it really took me out of the movie.

Not every character has one of those moments, but enough do that it is obvious where things are going. Clearly they’re going to be haunted by stuff from their pasts, but I didn’t expect how quickly this was going to start. Mere minutes after they enter the catacombs, mystical shenanigans start and the pacing went from zero to one hundred with all these unexplainable occurrences happening that related to something that had been established about a character, like the translator’s brother drowning, or things whose significance would be revealed later, like an old phone ominously ringing waiting for Scarlett to pick it up. That’s my biggest problem about the pacing: these things just start happening and they don’t give the viewer any time to digest what’s being shown to them…not that they would really need that time because that’s the other big problem here, all these visions are so basic that the meaning of everything is incredibly obvious.

The problem with classifying this as a horror movie is that the only time it ever attempts to be scary is when it indulges itself in a jump scare, which are all laughably bad. Nothing about the symbolism or imagery that we see is ever truly frightening, or even that grotesque or upsetting, it’s just ‘this thing relates to this person’s backstory.’ These moments aren’t nearly as clever as the writers think they are and that’s the biggest issue, that nothing we are seeing is visually interesting. I’m fine with movies that concern themselves with characters and visuals over having an intricate plot but that means that those two things must be really good. The characters are fine but not deep enough to warrant these kinds of explorations and none of what you see is visually creative enough to leave a lasting impression. For me, the point of horror isn’t to show me something that I understand, it’s to show me something that I don’t understand. To leave me off-balance and questioning what is going on. Showing me things that I get instantly is just a waste of time, at least for this kind of movie.

Discussing the plot anymore would bring us into spoiler territory so I’ll just talk about the cinematography. The reason they went with the found footage aspect of the film was probably for production reasons as they actually did shoot in the catacombs and it would probably have been incredibly difficult to shoot a traditional film in those settings. The found footage gimmick was a clever way to try and simplify production as much as they could while still making a movie, but that doesn’t always work out here. I generally don’t get motion sickness from found footage movies but I really felt it during this one, the movements of the cameras were really jerky and there would be entire scenes with the camera just swaying back and forth. What kind of bugged me is that it seemed they were trying to go for more cinematic shots by having cameras on everyone’s headlamps but that mostly just made the movie look like it was shot by someone who didn’t know how to use a tripod. I would have preferred either a one or two camera found footage premise or have them just shoot it a traditional way.

I just don’t get why they went the direction they did here. Maybe the script read better, maybe there were things they wanted to do but didn’t have the budget for, but whatever the case this just isn’t a satisfying execution of a good premise. Having the studio be too ashamed to even reveal the plot of the movie in the trailer was a big red flag and everything just seemed to be done in half measures. This might be a good introduction to visually driven psychological horror, but for everyone else, just put on a David Lynch movie or play any numbered Silent Hill game, which share the premise of people being tortured by their inner demons but tackles it in a much more nuanced, subtle and scary way