Topsy-Turvy

I just never learn.  I keep telling myself not to see the latest low-budget found footage film 'As Above, So Below' after seeing its trailer but ended up watching it anyway.  I don't know why.  Maybe I'm  suffering from 'Paranormal Activity' withdrawals or simply bored out of my mind, but this crapfest from John Erick Dowdle ('Quarantine,' 'Devil') did nothing to satiate my thirst for even a mediocre horror flick because it failed to bridge the gap between myth and reality.

 

'As Above, So Below' started promisingly enough with an interesting concept, the search for the mythical "Philosopher's Stone," and an engaging protagonist in Scarlet Marlowe (Perdita Weeks), a brilliant young adventurer/archeologist in the vein of Lara Croft.  Her quest for the elusive Philosopher's Stone takes her and a small group of explorers (including a Scott Baio lookalike 'love interest') to the 'mysterious' underworld catacombs of Paris, a labyrinthine network of tunnels that would make even the most stout-hearted among us claustrophobic.  Inevitably, the deeper she and her group ventured into the unknown, the weirder and 'scarier' things got, except for the fact that about two-thirds of the way through this grueling exercise I became so bored with apathy that nothing the movie throws at me could scare me anymore.

 

While I expected movies like this to be filled with enough logic and plot holes to make me want to claw my eyes out, AASB seemed to be saddled with more than its fair share.  Case in point, in one scene the Philosopher's Stone (yes, Scarlet found her holy grail!) exhibited its wondrous healing powers when it repaired a badly skinned arm of one of the explorers, but then later it failed to do its magic on two occasions, forcing poor Scarlet to backtrack and get the 'right' stone in a rushed and highly confusing sequence.  Huh?  Then the movie truly fell apart when it became 'psychological horror' because as the group went ever deeper, they became increasingly disoriented and started seeing inexplicable visions from their past.  These apparitions added nothing to further the plot and only managed to dissipate any suspense and momentum painstakingly built over the first half of the movie.  And oh boy, don't even get me started about the WTF???!!! ending.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  They should never have emerged out of the catacombs.

Grade: F