"As Above, So Below" Review

As Above, So Below

2.5 out of 5 Stars

Family appropriateness rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Rated R
-Moderate amount of gory violence
-Moderate amount of strong language, including f-words
-Some images might scare children.










"As Above, So Below" succeeds at offering an interesting premise, but it fails to deliver scares.

Scarlett (Perdita Weeks) is a go-getter on a quest to find the Philosopher's Stone, a magical artifact created by Nicholas Flamel that is rumored to grant immortality and the power to change everything to gold.

She happens upon a breakthrough that leads her to believe the stone is beneath the catacombs of Paris where over six million people have been buried because the city lost room for the dead. She gets a team together to go with her and find it. None of them suspect that there are dangers beyond what they can imagine.

The film starts off interesting. It is a found-footage version of "National Treasure" at the beginning. In fact, there is one part reminiscent of that film in which Scarlett pours a chemical on the back of a stone, which reveals a clue.

The idea of searching for the Philosopher's Stone is a good premise in and of itself especially for people like me who are fans of Harry Potter. The fact that they are in the catacombs beneath Paris is also enough keep my attention. In fact, one scene shows that people can tour them, and it made me interested in going there one day.

It seems that the filmmakers started off with a "National Treasure" type of movie, but halfway into the first act, they decided to do horror instead. So they got a make up artist from off the streets to do living dead figures, and they did some cliché shots of disappearing characters.

Every time the camera shows a figure that is supposed to be scary, it is not. They look like something an amateur would put in a haunted corn maze. In fact, the make up artists for those probably do a better job.

A possible reason for this is a lack of money. According to Wikipedia, the budget was only 5 million dollars, and this is painfully obvious. The filmmakers do not seem to understand that what is scary is what is not shown. They should have looked at classics like John Carpenter's "Halloween" as an example of what to do. In the entirety of that film, the character, Michael Myers, is never shown in full light. Another example is "Paranormal Activity" in which the demon is invisible.

There are a few intense moments, but none of them involve the "frightening images." The best scene is in the beginning before Scarlett even thinks about the catacombs. She searches for a certain artifact in Iraq that would help her find the Philosopher's Stone. It involves hiding from real people and real explosions. The audience never even sees who is chasing her. Had the whole film been like that one scene, it would have been fantastic. As it stands, it is cheesy.

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