As Above, So Below

2014 • 93 minit

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Miles of twisting catacombs lie beneath the streets of Paris, the eternal home to countless souls. When a team of explorers ventures into the uncharted maze of bones, they uncover the dark secret that lies within this city of the dead. A journey into madness and terror, As Above, So Below reaches deep into the human psyche to reveal the personal demons that come back to haunt us all. (Original Title - As Above, So Below)

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as you can see by the cover and title the premise is intriguing... but you soon realise that as the film Progress's it starts falling apart, the plot becomes flawed, the acting is terrible from start to finish. At times its genuinely claustrophobic and dark, other times comical, sadly it never reaches scary, and the paper thin plot becomes a convoluted mess. If you don't mind renting films regardless of others opinions then give it a go, its not awful but far far from good.

As Above, So Below has cult status in an already cult community - fans of the niche roleplaying game Lamentations of the Flame Princess - which is how I came to it. Along with The Descent, this is one of the best depictions of what it would really be like to crawl into a hole in the earth in search of ancient, mystical treasure - grubby, physically demanding, psychologically damaging, and frequently fatal. What starts as a quest for an ancient lost relic soon becomes a struggle for survival (but it's a horror movie, so you knew that anyway). The movie scores points for having excellent mirroring between plot and structure (which I won't spoil, but there's a clue in the title) that turn what could be a contrived setup into a thematic throughline that carries the film and informs the logic of the weirder events to occur. Character beats are believable and the characters are all likeable, if identifiably flawed, which helps immeasurably - not one of them did I want to see dead. The use of multiple handicams for the footage is immersive and effective, even if (as always) it's obscure why the characters keep carrying such heavy gear so far after the horror has started.

This film is much better than these comments made it seem. The atmosphere it builds is incredible, and it is terrifying without relying on cheap jump scares. The story itself is really interesting (think lara croft esque) and although I don't know if I was entirely satisfied with the ending, I thought the whole film was well done enough, especially in terms of the atmosphere built, to still give 5 stars.