Right, look, if you know me, you know by now that I’m a huge fan of found footage. I wouldn’t have written an absurdly involved deep-dive on The Blair Witch Project if I wasn’t. But I am the first to admit that this genre has produced a whole lot of, to put it lightly, absolute fucking dogshit. It’s a genre that often appeals to low-budget newbie filmmakers – and, while that can sometimes produce brilliance, a lot of the time, it turns out crap.
And As Above, So Below was very much included in that large pile of crap when it came out back in 2014. So much so that I skipped it for a long time. But I am always willing to admit when I made a mistake, and friends, I did: As Above, So Below is great, and I want to talk about it.
Directed by John Erick Dowdle (a name you might recognise thanks to one of his earlier movies, The Poughkeepsie Tapes), As Above, So Below starts with a juicy premise: a young academic, Scarlett (Perdita Weeks), heads down to the Catacombs of Paris to continue her father’s search for the legendary philosopher’s stone (no, not that one).
The Parisian Catacombs are already a rich setting for a horror movie; much like the wasteful Chernobyl Diaries, As Above struck (underground) gold with this backdrop, an oppressive labyrinth of potential, with plenty of room to play around within the history tied to the place. But, beyond that, what I loved so much about As Above was how it balanced horror and a kind of action-adventure-mystery storytelling that’s so hard to get right.
Horror is a genre that often embraces the unknowable and inexplicable, and I’ve got no issue with a movie that doesn’t offer a direct explanation for the events depicted; but creating an internal logic within the movie that goes some way to explaining the story really can add to a film for me, and As Above does that brilliantly. It’s got the feel of an Unchartered game in a really bad mood, a jaunty historical mystery unravelled with a heavy dose of trauma horror thrown in for good measure. I love the way this mystery comes together, drawing on historical influence and iconography and mixing it with character details that feel genuinely personal and unique, and I wish I’d come across more movies that blended action-adventure-mystery with horror the way this does (yes, this is an invitation to drop your recommendations in the comments below).
Throw in some solid performances and a satisfying ending that draws together the movie’s themes of guilt and grief, and I just can’t work out why As Above, So Below is so often dismissed as another found footage failure. Have you seen this movie? If you have, what did you think of it? Let me know in the comments!
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via IMDB)
No But Listen 