Review of As Above, So Below (2014) by Kim M — 01 May 2015

An intriguing setting and an interesting idea. That's exactly what this film had going for it and that's exactly what the film squanders. As Above/So Below documents an archaeologist as she attempts to discover a long lost artifact, only to discover the horrors keeping it safe.

As I mentioned, there are some pretty interesting ideas here. What would be on the other end of a secret passage in the catacombs in France? That question certainly leads to an interesting place...for about the first twenty or thirty minutes of the film.

For the rest, however, it is almost like the filmmakers made the conscious decision to make a substandard, run of the mill horror flick. And the sad part is, there are actual sprinkles of good content throughout that try to evoke some psychological/moral questions, but they are immediately brushed under the carpet for the next jump scare.

On the acting front, we get so so acting, because they have been given cut and paste horror characters, and they are somewhat unknown actors, which tries to sell the found footage aspect. The found footage medium is having a hard time finding an excuse to stick around.

I personally found 2015's Project Almanac to be a nice diamond in the rough, but this one is just a stinker. This never should have been the medium of choice to tell this story, and it shouldn't have "gone for broke" in the last half hour.

In the last act, the filmmakers throw everything at the wall while simultaneously jumping over plot holes, skipping the good stuff, and sending it down the rabbit hole of typical horror trash. And when the ending rolls around, the filmmakers seem too scared to touch on anything that happened, so we get a flashback monologue, as is the case with a lot of found footage films.

This was a good opportunity to be unique, but it failed.