***DISCLAIMER: I am writing this review FULLY AWARE that no one, not a single person I can think of, gives a shit about this movie.
As if we're not tired enough of the found footage genre we are subjected to yet another attempt to cash in on the Paranormal Activity novelty that has all but worn its welcome out to a select few. I'm getting damn frustrated at this year's horror releases. The directors who do the genre justice have all basically decided they're tired of horror and have moved on to making decent movies in a different genre. The ones who suck at it keep chugging along. That's not to say that the brother duo directors of As Above So Below suck at the genre (they mostly do), but they are refusing to adjust their template for horror. They must find the found footage aspect of horror so intriguing because of their four released films only one of them (the horrendous Devil) has been shot regularly. Just like the superhero genre, I'm ready for something new. Even the directors look like they're just doing found footage for the sake of doing it, because this movie could've been shot like a typical film and the "integrity" of the movie wouldn't have been compromised.
Let's begin with the most hackneyed plot of the year. Scarlette is a professor of history who's father, since she was a little girl, searched his whole life for the Sorcerer's Stone. No, ladies and gentlemen, I promise I'm not reviewing the first Harry Potter book, this is legitimately the plot. She knows everything there is to know about it's creator Nicolas Flamel (aka Dumbledore's best pal). So, she's found clues that leads her to Paris where she knows she can find the Stone by traveling underground and searching through the tight spaces of the "catacombs" that run for miles under the streets of ole Paris. Unfortunately, all of the clues are written in Aramaic, but luckily for her, she's got an old love interest who can read it. Finally, for reasons that aren't explained at all, there's a dude following her with a camera who is attempting to make a documentary about her search. So, through some questionable plot turns, she's able to assemble a French team who knows the catacombs well. They travel underneath piecing together the Aramaic clues they've collected and a paper map (that they can read and translate on the spot without any sort of preparation) that leads them to the Stone. The way they piece clues together is as if Scarlette and her man-friend are playing a back and forth of epiphanies. One will say something cryptic and the other will have a lightbulb pop over his or her head and that's the answer to the riddle. That answer leads them through these (heavily oxygenated) catacombs without even so much as a second thought. This happens at least half a dozen times throughout the film and plays out like a cheesier version of a National Treasure film. Finally, once they've gone so deep, they've apparently wandered in front of the gates of Hell. We know this because above the door it says in perfect Aramaic "Abandon all hope ye who enter here." Scarlette then retorts that according to "mythology" this is what is posted over the gates of Hell. I'm glad we've finally admitted, after all these years, that Dante's Inferno is no longer a fiction, but ancient mythology.
Now, I'm not sure why you would, but if you're planning on seeing the movie, skip the rest of this paragraph because I'm going to provide a tiny bit of spoiler... it won't ruin the movie for you, but it has to be mentioned. Yes, they enter Hell. It happens. And it's super orange and red. And there's hauntings of the past out to swallow them all. And, then, there's the grim reaper. I shit you not. The grim reaper. How do I know this? Does one of them call back to an ancient Egyptian portrait of the reaper that only a student of history could know? Or is he dressed like a twelve year old on Halloween? Yeah. You guessed it. It's the latter. Seriously walking around ominously is this dude:
He honestly couldn't look less scary if he popped up looking like this:
Throughout the film I counted two... only two semi-decent scares. There was probably one more moment of tension that may get your heart beating a little faster than a brisk walk to the fridge. That's it. Most of the time you're laughing at how every element of the plot has been taken by another, better work. I also counted the phrase "we've got to keep moving" over twelve times. It's probably more because I only started counting when I noticed that seemed to be the go-to phrase for when anything strange happens. It's the defense mechanism of the dumb.
The film is too long and it takes WAY too long to get to the horror bits of the film. They don't even enter the catacombs until almost an hour into the film. It may have been less than that, but it felt longer. Then, weird stuff starts to happen some time after that, then they try to scare you in the last twenty minutes. It takes forever for anything to happen and by the time it does, you don't care anymore. They spend that time making it so that any character you even semi-cared about is turned into a whiny, screaming, irrational asshole that you hope gets the grim finger of death. Seriously, I still can't believe the grim reaper was in the movie. I kept waiting for a red satan with horns and pitchfork to pop up and yell SINNER!
I'm seriously over the found footage aspect of film right now. By the end of AASB I had a headache from the camera shakiness that wound up looking like a first person shooter with hands karate chopping stone demons and racing through the maze like it's the final level of a video game. It was choppy and pain-inducing. The directors even forgot who was filming at certain points. A couple of the perspective camera shots come from people who don't make it to the end... so how are we viewing this footage in the first place?? And there's two scenes where someone is apparently filming, but don't have a camera on their heads. If you don't have a reason to do it, then why do it? The scares aren't worth the wait for them and the end result is lackluster because if you have any sort of brain whatsoever, you'll be able to call the ending coming from a mile away. I would say wait for Redbox, but even then, this movie is worthless to watch at home. Please. PLEASE. Somebody make a good horror movie soon. After all the crap we've seen this year, I feel it's deserved.
D
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