As Above, So Below

As Above, So Below

I really wish I could endorse “As Above, So Below” more wholeheartedly. This is the found-footage film with a strong premise and memorably eccentric style, plenty of energy to burn and a lot of bad ideas. Not that being poorly conceived and hard to watch has ever been such a terrible thing for B-horror movies, which are essentially genre comfort food or should be. And it’s not as if the novelty of exploring an already-constricted space (subterranean Parisian catacombs) shot through an all-seeing fish eye lens weren’t at least somewhat endearing.

But still: There’s no getting around the fact that this claustrophobic thriller is probably as close as recent horror films have come to approximating the feel of a haunted-house attraction complete with violent shakey cam sequences that would seem cheap even in a trailer for “Saving Private Ryan.”

There are some great impressionistic visual cues throughout, like when dust and rubble scatter around the camera during the film’s introductory scene. And the movie’s setting, cramped enough to be frequently creepy on its own, only becomes more atmospheric once rock gives way to bone. But then our protagonists put down their rinky-dink digital head-rigs and oh brother.

Because it wants so badly to be a movie shaped theme park ride but also because it wants so badly to be a narrative-driven horror movie “As Above, So Below” is dragged down by way too much backstory baggage. See Scarlett (Perdita Weeks), whose human-shaped plot-points include being brilliant fluent in Aramaic? check!; able to scale sheer cave walls? mais oui! and having daddy issues.

She’s our guide through these dark-as-night tunnels beneath Paris; her search for the Philosopher’s Stone is what led us here tonight. Joining her are fraidy cat language expert George (Ben Feldman, whom you may remember as Ginsberg from “Mad Men”), stoic cameraman Benji (Edwin Hodge) and full-of it urban explorer Papillon (Francois Civil), who insists on pronouncing his nickname “Pap-ee-OWN.”

Together with Papillon’s companions Souxie and Zed (Marion Lambert and Ali Marhyar), they will search for the Stone and find a gateway to Hell instead. Along the way, they will be confronted by any number of ghosts of their own pasts not to mention a haunted telephone, an impossibly deep pool of blood, a burning car and a malnourished French raver who may or may not be undead. La Taupe is his name; ask him again, he’ll tell you the same.

As gruel-thin scenarios go, this one’s pretty reasonable if only because it’s so reminiscent of so many crass real-life attractions one might encounter in a city like Berlin. There is actually such a thing as Grusellkabinett: It’s a haunted house attraction built on top of preserved Nazi bunkers. Which is garish and excessive, yes but seeing stone gargoyles and anorexic witches and hanged men in the midst of an already creepy setting? Fun stuff, when you accept that sheer overkill is really the only name of this particular game.

Morever: Weeks and Feldman don’t have to do much to sell their stick-figure protagonists’ enthusiasm for spelunking; both are charming enough that you believe these characters really want to explore even after Scarlett has discovered her first alchemist’s crypt at age 20-something (“I’ve been looking for this my whole life!”) or George has squeezed through his second tiny hole in however many minutes (“Why does everything keep getting smaller?”).

You don’t fault them their generic need to see and do things that normal, semi-intelligent people know not to, like take the hood off of a hanged man’s face. It’s a bad idea, but it’s hardly an offensive one in a movie that sometimes feels like a series of video-game cut scenes you cannot fast-forward through.

But “As Above, So Below” fails most when trying to become a movie. The film gets slow when Scarlett’s group starts asserting themselves as people (!!!) haunted by personal trauma dead dads, brothers, guys in cars, etc. I’m sorry, but if you’re going to wander around wee tunnels that might be the road to an infernal plane of existence or whatever, I don’t care what your pre-Hellmouth life was like. That’s for your therapist, not a 93-minute survival-horror adventure.

Still though. If I could see clearly the ghost of my dead gallic buddy or whatever or the aforementioned gargoyle that maybe(?) took a bite out of my face, you can throw all the dead friends and relatives and notary publics at me. Points to “As Above, So Below” for attempting to make its film look different from the rest of found-footage junk.

But they shot their distinctive-impressionist camera-work in such head splittingly alienating bursts that even viewers with cast-iron stomachs will want barf-bag/bottle Dasani/strong shoulder/headrest just to prevent early on set car sickness. “As Above, So Below” is unique enough to be worth one ticket’s money but you will hesitate before standing back up for second turn through line.

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