Saturday, September 6, 2014

Andrew's Cinematic Adventures: As Above So Below Movie Review

I hate horror movies. They are the worst. I especially hate horror movies that deal with anything demonic...because I've seen stuff like that in my own life...and it scares the living daylights out of me. For good reason too.

I don't know what possessed me (bahahaha...demon puns) to go see this movie. I blame it on a combination of adrenaline from wanting to be scared and my friend Abby. She wanted to see it...and forced me against my will to see the movie with her. I lie. It was completely my decision. I wanted to see if I could handle it.

As Above So Below is a found-footage style film like The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield. Normally, these types of movies give me motion sickness and I have to watch with a healthy mix of Dr. Pepper and dramamine, due to excessive camera shaking. This movie, somehow, didn't do that to me. Perhaps because I was utterly terrified throughout the entire movie.

The basic plot of the movie revolves around a group of archaeologists of some sort who are in search of the legendary Philosopher's Stone and are led to the catacombs underneath Paris to search. The catacombs of Paris are basically a tomb filled with millions of dead people. You can imagine where this movie takes this. They decide to enlist the help of some French grave-diggers or something (I'm not sure what they were...they found them in a club) to guide them to certain untouched parts of the catacombs. The majority of the movie takes place in areas that would make any person who hates tight spaces and dark corners absolutely mad. IT WAS ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING.

This movie did exactly what it was supposed to do. I legitimately jumped out of my seat and swore very vulgarly (is it even possible to swear and not have it be vulgar) numerous times because of what was happening on the screen in front of me. This was more terrifying than The Blair Witch Project or any of the Paranormal Activities. The setting was perfect for the found-footage format. I felt legitimate dread every corner they looked around and the further into the catacombs they ventured.

 There are a few gripes that I have with the film, which I guess could be gripes with the entire found-footage genre. It might be purposeful, but these movies always seem to pick actors and characters that I really could care less about. They are always unnecessarily annoying and tend to make decisions that no normal person would ever make. The majority of their fates in the movie are justified...because they are putting themselves into STUPID SITUATIONS. The characters in this movie are exactly like that. Especially the main character Scarlett. She essentially gets all her friends killed because of her thirst for finding the Philosopher's Stone. The only character I actually cared about was the cameraman Benji. His reactions to events and scary figures were actually the reactions I would have if I were in the situation. So, in a sense, I related to the man. Poor Benji. Why would you ever become friends with Scarlett.

The other gripe I have with this movie is the ending. I won't give away too many details, but once the sh*t starts hitting the fan I kinda lost my understanding of what was happening. The more things got murky and freaky, the more my head started to hurt. I'm pretty sure there was a grip reaper at one point...maybe a dog ran past playing a piano...something about popsicles. I don't know. I got super confused and all I know is that things were freaky and then someone mentioned the name of the movie AS ABOVE SO BELOW. It was written on the wall somewhere...and I always get really excited when the movie says the name of the movie. It's all like meta or whatever.

But besides all that, the movie was incredibly entertaining and achieved the purpose of frightening the viewers. Abby and I closed our eyes numerous times and jumped various times. That's hard to do. We are avid movie goers and it's not easy to get us. This movie got us.

Also, it was slightly difficult to get past the obvious Philosopher's Stone connection with Harry Potter. The more they talked about it, the more I wanted them to go talk to Nicholas Flamel or Dumbledore. It got even more ridiculous when they actually TALKED ABOUT NICHOLAS FLAMEL in the frickin movie. I was half expecting Hagrid to show up and say..."Yer a wizard Scarlet."






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