By Brett Blake We're back in action with our fourth episode of The Cinematic Confab. In today's installment, I'm again joined by my regular partners-in-crime, Brenton Thom and Breanne Brennan, for a no-holds-barred, comprehensive discussion of 2014's Summer Movie Season. Topics Include: - The relatively lackluster box-office performance of many of the summer movies. - Marketing campaigns shooting their own films in the foot. - Films that surprised us by how good they were. - Films that surprised us by how bad they were. - The issue of whether Steven Spielberg bears any blame for the continued success of Michael Bay's TRANSFORMERS franchise. - Our individual 3 favorite movies of the summer. We also throw in some bad impressions of Tom Cruise's death screams from EDGE OF TOMORROW and Harrison Ford's ultra-grumpy line deliveries from THE EXPENDABLES 3! Disclaimer: The Cinematic Confab is a non-profit entertainment and analysis podcast. All audio clips and music cues used are the property of their individual copyright holders. They are presented here under the banner of “Fair Use,” for the purpose of analysis, criticism, and/or humor. No infringement of copyright is intended.
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By Brett Blake AS ABOVE, SO BELOW is the latest in the seemingly never-ending series of “found footage” (or first-person-perspective, if you like) horror films, a style of filmmaking that has flooded the horror marketplace to such an extent that its visceral, “You Are There!” charms are starting to wear thin. Still, in the right hands, found footage can work quite well, and AS ABOVE, SO BELOW is absolutely one of the stronger examples of the technique at work. It’s a very solid, surprisingly esoteric spookfest that serves up some very chilling moments without overstaying its welcome. The film begins, funnily enough, more in the vein of an Indiana Jones or DA VINCI CODE adventure than an outright horror tale; we follow Scarlett (Perdita Weeks), a very driven (and very young) professor/archaeological explorer on a search for the legendary Philosopher’s Stone (perhaps familiar to fans of the Harry Potter series as the Americanized “Sorcerer’s Stone”). Her quest involves gathering together a motley crew that includes another amateur archaeologist/old friend named George (Ben Feldman), a documentarian called Benji (Edwin Hodge), and a trio of spelunkers/cave experts (François Civil, Marion Lambert, and Ali Marhyar). The group sets out into the hundreds-of-miles-long, labyrinthine network of catacombs beneath Paris in a search for the Stone, and once they get underground, it is not long before some incredibly bizarre and frightening things begin to manifest… On paper, that probably sounds like a very standard, run-of-the-mill horror film, but AS ABOVE, SO BELOW has ambitions that are somewhat higher than that. You start with a pretty unusual and fun premise, and some legitimately neat elements about the lore of the catacombs, archaeological and alchemic myth, and occult practices are layered onto that framework in a way that’s decidedly more sophisticated than you would ever expect. I made the comparison to Indiana Jones (in terms of substance, not tone; the film has a decidedly more dreadful air than any of the Indy adventures), and that’s honestly not too far off, at least for the first half, which features translation of dead languages and runes, secret passageways, booby traps, and even some pseudo-religious discussion. All of this gives the movie a unique flavor that is memorable, particularly in an era in which we seem to get a new found footage cheapie every other week. But this is a horror film, after all, and the scary payoff to all the archaeological setup is refreshingly solid. The movie (for the most part) thankfully eschews relying entirely on major jump scares - there are a few, but not nearly as many as one might expect - in favor of conjuring up an atmosphere of intense unease. The setting of the Paris catacombs is exploited to the fullest degree by director John Erick Dowdle and his co-writer/producer/brother Drew Dowdle; they create a claustrophobic nightmare of dead ends and tight spaces that consistently helps to ramp up the tension. And by the time the supernatural forces in the catacombs begin to make their appearances (in the flesh, so to speak), the movie launches into a quite effective and eerie final section that is one of the stronger third acts to come out of a found footage film. Much of this has to do with the fact that AS ABOVE, SO BELOW actually has an ending that is thematically appropriate and (dare I say) even satisfying, something that can hardly ever be said of other found footage movies. Most tend to end in - more or less - the same way: cameras falling to the ground, the fates of our heroes left ambiguously sinister, and a sudden cut to black. But since AS ABOVE, SO BELOW actually has some thematic ideas on its mind (about confronting regret over past actions or in-actions, which is reflected in the characters constantly venturing deeper down into the depths, as if moving further away from - or closer to - their past traumas), we’re given a proper ending for our protagonists. The acting is uniformly good, and - even more important - the writing for these people is actually solid; this is not an annoying, irritating collection of types, but rather a group of flawed people with their own hang-ups. Perdita Weeks plays a driven lead quite well, and she does a fine job of keeping the character sympathetic when other, less skilled players might have gone all-in with emphasizing the character’s borderline-obsession with finding the Philosopher’s Stone. Ben Feldman and Edwin Hodge do the bulk of the supporting heavy lifting, and both get some moments that are pretty effective. Also effective (perhaps an understatement) is the sound design, which is absolutely first rate. There’s a reverberant, occasionally booming quality to the design, and it’s a detail-rich mix, with every scrape, slam, whispered voice, and flurry of dust adding to a very creepy overall texture. It’s worthy of serious Oscar consideration in the sound categories. The filmmaking pair behind this film - the Dowdle brothers - are kind of interesting guys, in the sense that they’ve quietly constructed a nice little run of movies in the horror genre. 2007’s THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES remains one of the most realistic and flat-out troubling serial killer films of recent years, 2008’s QUARANTINE is a serviceable American remake of the foreign found footage hit [REC], and 2010’s DEVIL is a neat TWILIGHT ZONEian yarn that deserved a wider audience than it got. With AS ABOVE, SO BELOW, they fully stake-out territory as horror pros who deliver solid thrills and scares with above average quality. AS ABOVE, SO BELOW is one of this year’s most pleasant surprises in the horror arena. |
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