Review of As Above, So Below (2014) by Matt G — 05 Sep 2014

How do you critique a film when its main purpose succeeds but, in every other way, it fails? As a force of visceral terror, AA,SB is spine-chilling fun; as a piece of storytelling, it's an eye-rolling drag. It's overly convoluted in its lore and overly simple in its characterization. There are too many characters, and every back story is senseless at best and annoying at worst. Like a well-executed haunted house, at times it's truly creepy...but haunted houses don't have to have a point. Stories do. This one doesn't.

AA,SB follows a tenacious Indiana-Jones-esque girl with daddy issues, leading a search for the philosopher's stone in the catacombs under Paris, France. Think Goonies if they grew up, lost their personality and got in over their heads. It's full of the basic horror foreshadowing (ominous signs, uncouth jokes) and telling dialogue, making it hard to be surprised or really care when the deaths begin to pile up.

Most frustrating is that AA,SB is yet another movie hurt by the gimmick of found footage. I get that they wanted to make it seem more "real" to enhance the scares, but a simple handheld camera would've done the trick. As is, it's incomprehensibly shaky, unintentionally goofy, and lazily edited (in the club scene, notice how the music never stops when the shots cut).

Again, this movie IS scary, especially once you push past the surprisingly long build up to the catacombs. There's some great cultish imagery and plenty of jumps to effectively make you avert your gaze. Outside of these too few classic horror moments, pervasive dumbness reigns supreme.