Movie Review: As above so below

Story: Scarlett’s father killed himself and so she decides to take up his quest looking for the philosopher’s stone. The clues take her to Iran and then to Paris where she finds people to guide her through the catacombs and commit various crimes.

Thoughts:

Usually I hate the beginning of horror films because the characters are awful. Their only characteristics being getting drunk, partying and having no redeemable features. So I just want to get to the killing part. Surely you want the audience to care about the characters to create tension. It’s also scarier when they die.

The beginning of this horror film I liked. I enjoyed watching the adventures of the woman who commits crimes and gets her friends arrested. Once in the catacombs this becomes get people killed.

Scarlett is crazy and this is why I like her. She’s very driven and focused on not letting her father’s quest be in vain (it’s always fathers never mothers) and gets almost everyone killed. I want a sequel where she goes looking for another mythical object and ups the body count.

The rest of the characters all have little sins in their past that they regret so of course once in hell they’ll be haunted by them.

Some of the deaths are funny rather than scary and I’m not sure how the supernatural works in this film. If just being in hell causes things to happen or if there is a being with some motive trapping them and forcing them to go further down.

I like the setting of the catacombs. It’s very claustrophobic with lots of tight spaces and dead bodies. I’m surprised I haven’t seen a horror film set there before.

As far as found footage goes this is fairly standard. It’ll make some people feel ill while the awful camera will take others out of the film.

I’ve never been able to get through a found footage film without having the illusion shattered at some point. Usually by not being able to see anything clearly.

You can also tell when a scare is about to happen. This is usually when the camera stops moving so much and you can actually see what’s going on.

Like all found footage as soon as people start running you can’t tell what’s happening. And it stops being scary. It’s only when the characters see something scary and they decide to point the camera at it instead of getting away that you get any scary moments.

And as always you have to wonder why they’re still filming once they’ve passed through the gates of hell. Or after one of them dies.

It’s nice to know technology still works in hell. So it’s not like Harry Potter where technology doesn’t work around magic.

I want to know so much more about how this world works. Like did they bury all those bodies there because they knew it was above the gates of hell or did so much death make someone open hell there.

Conclusion:

If you like found footage and crazy cameras don’t bother you, you’ll like this. I’m a fan of bad horror films so I really like this. I want to see more of Scarlett leading people into dangerous situations.

Liked it? Take a second to support Kathryn on Patreon!