Year of Release: 2014
Director: John Erick Dowdle
Starring: Perdita Weeks, Ben Feldman, Edwin Hodge, François Civil, Marion Lambert, Ali Marhyar, Cosme Castro, Hamid Djavadan
Genre: Mystery, Horror
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 4
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review
Following the exposure of his prior film, "Devil", which featured the involvement of writer/producer/director M. Night Shyamalan, writer/director John Erick Dowdle reunited with his brother once again to work on their follow up, which turned out to be "As Above So Below". Working with a modest budget, the film managed to eek out a good return on that investment, even if for the director he has mostly been working on TV shows since. The film follows the story of Scarlett Marlowe, who is a scholar/archeologist of sorts, who is following on the footsteps of her father, who was searching for the Philosopher's Stone (that stone can reputedly turn base metals into gold and also grant eternal life). While in Paris she uncovers what she thinks may be the location of the stone in the catacombs of Paris. She recruits her former boyfriend George, to help with possible translations, and Benji, to be a cameraman and record the entire journey. Along the way and due to their limited knowledge of the catacombs, they enlist the help of Papillon, his girlfriend Souxie, and their friend Zed, since they are quite familiar with that maze. As the group gets into the catacombs, Scarlett indicates they should take a certain route, something that Papillon advises against, since the people who take that particular route never reappear. While they decide to take a different direction, by sheer force of circumstances they find themselves right back at that juncture, and they're forced to go through anyway. As they progress they encounter La Taupe, one of Papillon's missing friends, who is acting quite differently, and eventually get to a tomb that features a preserved Templar Knight. They also uncover the stone, however when one of the group tries to take some of the treasure that is stored in the tomb, traps are set in motion. Everything gets progressively more dangerous as the group tries to get out of the catacombs.
"As Above So Below" benefits from John Erick Dowdle's ability to effectively capture a claustrophobic environment from which the characters seem unable to escape. As they progress further down the rabbit hole of the catacombs, it does indeed seem like they are walking the different circles of Dante's Hell, something that is reinforced by the strategically supernatural elements that appear and disappear more frequently. Sadly this turns out to be when some of the lack of a strategy to the script starts to make it's cracks more visible. Firstly the characters are one-dimensional, which is something that is never properly addressed, with the addition that the supernatural elements are treated in the fashion of "blink and you missed it", and finally the mythology of what is being sought after, which brings to mind Steven Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", is handled with far less context or for that matter, gravitas and therefore its pursuit always feels inconsequential. The director manages to introduces a sense of unease, but not one of impending doom, which is indeed what the film needed to create. At times the feature comes across as a cross-fit video gone wrong, and not exactly a film about obsessively pursuing something that is life-changing, or realizing the meaning of what is taking place. The lack of maturity of the characters is echoed in the lack of depth of the script itself. What is indeed left, is a film that has its moments of placing a series of characters in a fish out of water situation, that they somehow have to find the resources within themselves to vanquish (there's even faint echos of Peter Filardi's script from "Flatliners" here). The cast sadly isn't very memorable, though the production team is efficient in staging the environment, including Léo Hinstin's cinematography and Louise Marzaroli's production design. It's not a flat out terrible endeavor, but it is a film that could have gone much further.
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