As Above So Below

A typically underwhelming found-footage horror flick, As Above So Below follows Perdita Weeks’ Scarlett as she and a few associates venture into the infamous catacombs beneath Paris to recover a precious (and powerful) gem. There’s a fair bit of promise contained within As Above So Below‘s opening stretch, as the movie’s first half is devoted primarily to the central characters’ Robert Langdon-esque adventures in Paris and (eventually) the aforementioned catacombs. It’s worth noting, too, that the characters’ initial foray into the notorious tombs fares relatively well, with filmmaker John Erick Dowdle nicely capturing the Descent-like claustrophobia that’s part-and-parcel with stories of this sort. (There’s a terrific early sequence in which Edwin Hodge’s Benji panics after getting stuck in a very small crawlspace.) As Above So Below‘s descent into mediocrity, then, is triggered by a wholly ineffective midsection that seems, for the most part, to be spinning its wheels, with long stretches of time devoted to the surviving protagonists’ efforts at both figuring out what’s going on and how to escape from their increasingly hostile environs. The hopelessly incoherent climax – ie there’s just so much running and screaming – ensures that As Above So Below ends on a decidedly negative note, although it ultimately goes without saying that the film fares much, much better than that other Paris-catacombs thriller (2007’s Catacombs).

** out of ****