As Above, So Below

From John Erick Dowdle, I had previously seen only the film Devil, which within its genre managed to function relatively well, featuring a decent atmosphere and a plot that wasn't offensive. However, his subsequent work As Above, So Below represents a dignified fall in quality in every respect, descending somewhere into the lowest levels. I'm not fond of using strongly emotionally charged outbursts of dissatisfaction, but here, the loss of my time really hurts and leads me to want to curse loudly. The film reminds me of a creation by a group of enthusiasts who, without any experience or support, made a video for their own amusement. On the same day I saw Hereditary by the talented Ari Aster, which surpasses Dowdle's chaotic, poorly edited desperation by several classes. On databases, they have nearly identical ratings... Well, I guess I don't have to understand everything... Overall impression: zero out of zero. (21.06.2024)

To me, it's a shame that the creators of As Above, So Below chose the fake documentary form, which limited them too much. For example, all the characters had to see the hallucinations/delusions/ghosts of others, which were also recorded by their cameras, and that made me more upset than intrigued. The attractive idea of the film gradually sort of drowned in it, and the finale, which was definitely supposed to be bigger, except for the great last “head down" scene, bored me. (22.02.2021)

Considering how much I hate, despise and curse the found footage genre, As Above, So Below deserves nothing but praise and also that only uninteresting shit like Jessabelle and Ouija went to the cinema this year. Fortunately, the film is engaging and draws you in from start to finish, it doesn’t even have the typical 40 minute of uninteresting and epileptic boredom, here it more or less pedals along at full throttle all the time. The film maintains a perfect atmosphere, beautifully mixes mystery, adventure, historical and horror elements, it is shot in a very stylish way, no shaky camera, no grainy image; this is how it should look like! My only regret, however, is the lack of scares, although one of them was very decent. 80% (19.11.2014)

Robert Langdon in a skirt runs through the Parisian catacombs Indiana Jones-style in search of a secret chamber with the philosopher’s stone. To be honest, even though As Above, So Below blends motifs that I like (underground, ancient secrets, demons, mysticism, and history), the result is not very convincing and John Erick Dowdle is yet to reach the levels of The Poughkeepsie Tapes. That’s due mainly to the script, which is very weak, really. The characters are apathetic, they don’t react properly to all the shit going on around them. Something happens: “we have to keep on going”; something even worse happens: “we have to keep on going”; something happens: “oh! Our friend is dead. boo-hoo, whatever, we have to move on”. And that’s how it goes almost the whole time. Plus a bunch of never again mentioned, pointless and mysterious arbitrary nonsense (who was that mysteriously vanished guy that mentioned Papillon during the tour? And that mysterious girl leaving the club, did she have any purpose other than singing weirdly with other people later in the catacombs?) Sometimes it’s actually hard to watch, for instance, why did the fake magic stone worked the fist time, when they healed the injuries on that girl? Maybe some alchemist in the past had this train of thought: “I will make a beta version of the philosopher’s stone, single use, just in case someone who finds it wanted to see if it works. And then they will take it and, when they get back to the surface, they will realise that they have nothing but a worthless dud, ha, ha, ha!”. Some of the scary scenes are pretty effective, the tempo is high, so there’s no risk of getting bored, those 90 minutes are quite fun (on the other hand, the way the puzzles are solved feels almost always too hurried). Overall, the film is nothing but a chain of the worst and the best horror attractions, where the only slightly more ambitious motif of sin atonement is completely lost because there isn’t any bond with the characters. (06.09.2014)

After a long time, a horror movie that captures our attention with its subject, grabs us by the throat with its trailer, and confirms with the film that good ideas (even if subtly collected and rewritten from elsewhere) still work in this underestimated genre. It would be very easy to criticize a few overly easy riddles that Scarlett effortlessly solves or even the premise itself, but that would take away from the fun of the whole concept. The found footage format finally makes sense again, and those few damn well-crafted moments (most of which are stolen by the black-haired girl) were so intense that I found myself cheering on the main characters more and more, even if it only meant they would get got around the next corner. (11.07.2015)