Review of As Above, So Below (2014) by Come2Whereiam — 31 Aug 2014

As Above, So Below has the premise to be a great horror film on paper but sadly on the screen just signals the death of a genre made popular by ‘The Blair Witch Project’ some 15 years ago. Do you want to make a film but can’t be arsed? Then make a shaky-cam film as there is little or no skill required to produce an hour and a half of headache inducing wobbly action.

Starting in Iran before moving to the catacombs of Paris the camera work is so frenetic that I couldn’t make out what the hell I was looking at most of the time it certainly didn’t deliver on the promise of the great setting as this could have been any old cave by the time they finally get round to going there, and that’s the films main problem it’s just dull and drawn out.

I’ve been to the catacombs (one of the reasons I went to see this film) and it is a quite scary place, the person I was with had a panic attack and yet none of this comes across in the film and this is before it spirals down into a mess of supernatural mumbo jumbo which just makes the last portion of the movie laughable.

Plucky brit Lara wannabe Scarlett leads her team in to the caves like a poor man’s Descent, two of her party are clearly only there to be killed off and may as well of worn a red Star Trek top each from the outset.

Once inside they quest for a magic stone that has the ability to heal you if you get hurt therefore removing any suspense that might have been left in this vacuous borefest. All it took to make this film is any old cave, a group of models and a handful of Go-Pros and a way of reducing the majesty and history of the Paris catacombs into nothing more than a gimmicky footnote to get people in to the cinema.