AS ABOVE, SO BELOW (2014)

Studio:       Universal Pictures
Director:    John Erick Dowdle
Writer:       John Erick Dowdle, Drew Dowdle
Producer:  Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Drew Dowdle, Patrick Aiello
Stars:     Perdita Weeks, Ben Feldman, Edwin Hodge, Francois Civil, Marion Lambert, Ali Marhyar

Review Score:

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Summary:

Urban archaeologists descend deep beneath the catacombs of Paris in search of Nicolas Flamel’s fabled Philosopher’s Stone.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

With the help of her contact Reza, urban archaeologist Scarlett Marlowe infiltrates an Iranian cave system prior to its scheduled demolition. Hidden behind a wall inside the cave, Scarlett discovers The Rose Key, a code cipher inscribed on a bull totem capable of translating chemical symbols into Aramaic. Scarlett takes photos of the inscriptions and confronts a strange vision of her deceased father hanging from a noose before narrowly escaping the detonated cave-in.

While being recorded by her cameraman Benji, Scarlett travels to Paris to continue her father’s lifelong search for Nicolas Flamel’s fabled Philosopher’s Stone, which legend holds as being capable of transforming any substance into gold as well as being the key to eternal life. Although he is initially reluctant, Scarlett recruits her former love interest George to help with the Rose Key translation. Together, they decode a secret riddle hidden on Flamel’s grave marker.

Scarlett and George deduce that the Philosopher’s Stone is buried 370.5 feet beneath Flamel’s grave. They take a tour of the catacombs to scope out possible entry points and receive a strange tip that an urban explorer named Papillon can help them find a way into the off-limits area.

Lured by the prospect of hidden treasure, Papillon agrees to help Scarlett and brings along his companions Souxie and Zed. Benji outfits several team members with helmet-mounted cameras. George refuses to enter the catacombs, but everyone is forced into a secret passage in order to escape the police and can only move forward.

Scarlett directs everyone down a particular corridor, but Papillon refuses, saying that the pathway in question is evil and his friend La Taupe disappeared there two years earlier. Papillon insists on taking a longer route instead. After a tunnel collapse during which Benji becomes briefly stuck, everyone finds themselves mysteriously back at the point where they chose Papillon’s direction. With no other alternative, the group follows the path on Scarlett’s map.

Papillon’s distinctive spray paint tag is found in the next corridor, although he claims to have never been there before. George finds a piano identical to the one his family had during childhood. Scarlett answers a ringing telephone and hears a bizarre personal message.

Unexpectedly, the group encounters Papillon’s friend La Taupe, who explains that the only way out of the catacombs is down. The spelunkers continue their descent while confronting additional nightmarish visions along the way.

The group enters the crypt of a dead Templar knight, although his corpse is strangely not decayed. Scarlett leads everyone through a secret passage underwater and finds the Philosopher’s Stone embedded in a wall. The treasure hunters accidentally trigger a cave-in during which La Taupe goes missing. Souxie is also hurt, but Scarlett heals her with the stone.

Continuing their descent, George translates the warning “abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” revealing that the explorers have somehow journeyed into Hell. They end up in the room they just exited, except all of the architecture is reversed. The entrance disappears, forcing them to go forward along the backwards path.

In the mirror image Templar tomb, La Taupe reappears and kills Souxie. Benji is attacked by the vision of a woman and falls to his death. George overcomes a vision of his dead brother shortly before Papillon is swallowed by a burning car.

A swarm of robed and disfigured people attacks George. Scarlett tries healing him with the stone, but it does not work. Scarlett rethinks the riddle and realizes that she does not have the true Philosopher’s Stone. She leaves George with Zed while retracing her steps to replace the stone.

Scarlett confronts a vision of her hanged father bearing her face. She puts the stone back in the wall and realizes that the real Philosopher’s Stone is intangible, existing within her metaphorically. Scarlett makes peace with the guilt she feels regarding her father’s death. She then returns to George and heals him simply by laying on hands.

Scarlett, George, and Zed come to a chasm that is their only way of advancing. Scarlett convinces the others that they must resolve themselves emotionally with personal demons before making a leap of faith into the pit, which everyone does.

The trio lands safely at the bottom of the pit. On the floor is a manhole. They pull it open and find reality on the other side, although they are on the underside of it where gravity is reversed. After exiting, Scarlett and George embrace while Zed walks away.

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Review:

How will horror history ultimately rank its list of 2014 releases?  Contrarians exist for any popularly ascribed opinion, of course.  But enough praise has been heaped upon “The Babadook” (review here) to qualify that film as a success, just as enough heads have shaken at “Ouija” (review here) to cement that one as a critical bomb.  In between those bookends, the rest of the year’s higher profile offerings have something of a King Solomon sword splitting their collective opinions into disparate halves.

Film festival favorite “Late Phases” (review here), for instance, uses the pull quote “masterpiece” on the top of its poster.  Yet The A.V. Club counters with labels of “dreary” and “ludicrous.”

“The Purge: Anarchy” (review here) is another popular polarizer.  The New York Daily News’ review contains choice phrasing like “ineffective,” “lazy,” and “ethically questionable cesspool of junk cinema.”  Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter uses more favorable terms such as “provocative,” “engaging,” and “well-staged.”

Along with “Annabelle” (review here), Exists” (review here), et al., “As Above, So Below” can be added to that bountiful midsection of 2014 horror with an inconclusive consensus balancing a lover for every hater.  IMDB message board comments for “As Above, So Below” range everywhere from “best horror movie of the year” to “pointless garbage,” although this sentence technically applies to virtually every film with an IMDB forum.  Another website hails “As Above, So Below” as “the scariest movie in years.”  Commenters there then hail that reviewer as a “sellout” in conspiratorial cahoots with studio PR.

Myself, I can’t think of what I could possibly want from a “found footage” horror film about urban archaeologists exploring Dante’s Inferno deep beneath the Paris catacombs that “As Above, So Below” doesn’t have.  Seamlessly blending the alternate history fiction of “The Da Vinci Code” with “The Last Crusade” and the exploration action of “Assassin’s Creed” with “Tomb Raider,” “As Above, So Below” is a head-on collision of everything thrilling about dark adventure entertainment.

There’s no slow ramp exposition dwelling on townspeople interviews or “get to know everyone” travel montages.  Main character Scarlett Marlowe literally hits the ground running in an opening sequence centered on action, complete with ominous klaxons, a haunting hanging, an explosive cave-in, and a patrolling squadron of armed Iranian guards turning the tension to capacity while latecomers are still settling into seats.

From there, the plot unrolls a semi-wacky premise incorporating the real-life legend of Nicolas Flamel and his fabled Philosopher’s Stone, purportedly capable of turning any substance into gold while endowing its owner with eternal life.  Equal parts athletic, attractive, and academic, archaeologist Scarlett is determined to fulfill her father’s legacy by locating the stone, said to be hidden somewhere below Flamel’s crypt in the bone-choked corridors of Paris’ catacombs.

Navigating those depths is no easy task, naturally.  Enter Papillon as the leader of a sketchy trio of urban explorers, armed with the right amount of knowledge about the off-limits underground and the right amount of French street sense to be colorful complements to Scarlett’s triad of documentarian bookworms.  Deeper into the darkness the sixsome descends until ending up in a gravity-defying mirror world suggesting they may have crossed the threshold into Hell itself.

Their ever-spiraling journey tumbles the team past displaced cultists in “Clan of the Cave Bear” makeup, the unusually intact corpse of a dead Templar knight, robed ghasts seated in random wooden chairs, and any number of assorted visualized nightmares personalized from traumatic memories.  Somehow, a loose logic connects the imagery as fitting the charm of the charnel caverns even if the mythology never fully articulates the complexities threading it all together.

Fantastic tunnel locations take the atmosphere far.  Terrific production design takes it further still with false floors and hieroglyph plates fashioned for a look between reality and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” prop.  “As Above, So Below” bridges those worlds of “found footage” fakery and fantasy fiction in both art direction and creative concept.

Dissenters can crack obvious jokes about perceived adolescent appeal, but director John Erick Dowdle and his co-writing brother Drew have intentions to capture Indiana Jones-like tension and matinee serial suspense, all while using an R-rated horror hook.  They do so with imagination and intensity that crackles from each new riddle solved to the next secret passage plumbed.

The Dowdle Brothers don’t think they’re pulling one over on anybody when the characterizations become cliché, and neither do the actors.  Everyone is aware that the goal is high entertainment, not high art, and occasionally it may take a cheat to advance the movie to its next suspenseful setpiece.

Perdita Weeks is so personable that her singularly focused overachiever of a spelunking professor is never as annoying as the archetype has every right to be.  Ben Feldman defies the rule against casting familiar faces in “found footage” and jumps his hurdle through sheer force of amiable screen presence.  Edwin Hodge of “The Purge” features in a legitimately breathtaking scene of asthmatic hysteria.  Meanwhile, Francois Civil asks, “are we dead?” so matter of factly when the mania hits feverish levels that it is clear everyone is dialed into a precise tone between freakish frights and filmic fun.

Having already impressed with “The Poughkeepsie Tapes” and their “Rec” remake “Quarantine” (review here), “As Above, So Below” equates The Dowdle Brothers with “found footage” on a level where James Wan is synonymous with haunted house horror.  Satisfying through supernatural scares and claustrophobic chills, the film’s combination of “The Descent” meets Dan Brown captured in a “Blair Witch Project” net makes for a unique horror adventure that is always twisting forward with slow terror or tight thrills.  As far as “found footage” cavern scares go, I don’t know how “As Above, So Below” could bring any more to the table.

Review Score:  90

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