As Above, So Below (2014)

Directed by John Erick Dowdle [Other horror films: The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007), Quarantine (2008), Devil (2010)]

I’ve seen this found footage movie only once before, and I recall enjoying it decently enough. I think it holds up pretty well after revisiting it, and while it doesn’t personally reach the heights of other found footage movies I love, As Above, So Below has a lot to offer.

Partially this is because of the allegorical nature of the film. I wouldn’t quite say that it ever reaches a philosophical level (this isn’t The Territory, thank God), but it’s also not exactly one of those simple found footage movies you throw on for a fun time – here, the plot takes a bit more thought, and I appreciated that approach.

Really, I appreciated the whole idea. The movie follows a young woman (Perdita Weeks) as she goes on her obsessive quest to locate the Philosopher’s stone underneath the Paris catacombs. Because of the setting, much of the film takes place underground, and to say that the film’s claustrophobic would be an understatement. Being a high budget found footage movie, it also does a decent job with authenticity, up to a point.

Once the bizarre and scary things start happening, the believability is stretched a bit, but it’s also fair to say that if they entered Hell, as some of the characters believe they did, that things wouldn’t be all hunky-dory there anyways. Some of the scares are more subtle – someone walking behind another with only the camera picking it up – while many are more upfront. Some scenes aren’t necessarily scary, but more unsettling, which has always been a fun vibe.

Perdita Weeks (Prowl) made for a good lead. Her character was easy to criticize, given her obsessive actions (she once left a good friend in a Turkish jail so she didn’t lose a lead), but she had some nice qualities too. Ben Feldman (who later starred in Superstore, a personal favorite of mine) seemed a decent guy, but I feel like we never really learned enough about him, and the same could be said for the rest of the important cast, being Edwin Hodge (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane), François Civil, Ali Marhyar, Marion Lambert, and the ever-important Cosme Castro.

I’m not going to touch on the allegorical nature of the film. For one, I’ve not read Dante, for another, part of the fun is seeing where the movie’s going (and that final sequence was pretty damn cool). I did want to mention that I appreciated how it occasionally felt like National Treasure, a guilty pleasure of mine. You have clues hidden on the back of old tablets, poems that lead to treasure, and all types of fun things.

As Above, So Below is a solid found footage movie. I don’t think that it’s stellar, and tt doesn’t do quite as much for me as, say, Hell House LLC, but it’s a good film, and I think that it’s well-appreciated in the horror community for a reason.

7.5/10