+ Best Mockumentary of the Year
+ Best Paris Movie of the Year
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| Paris' Eiffel Tower is upside down on a mass of skulls on this curiosity-sparking poster for John Erick Dowdle's As Above, So Below |
A highly educated and adventure-seeking female daredevil follows clues from a recent find in Iran on her deceased father's quest for the philosopher's stone to Paris, where she convinces a small group of fellow young people to join her search in the city's ancient catacombs.
After the dramatic pre-credit sequence in Iran, a big chunk of time is used on building up the story and the lead heroine's character: She sounds a bit like Indiana Jones but is deadly serious and too insane in her ideas to be relatable. She reunites with her friend Ben Feldman (Silicon Valley (2014-17)), who is easy on the eyes as more careful George.
The film's mix of mockumentary style, which usually clears out some of the feelings of the unreality of fiction, with wild adventure elements, (as when George makes a giant bell in the city chime after 300 years of silence), is fun and intriguing. - You just need to be game for swallowing a good dose of mumbo jumbo and sudden realizations that seem to come to our friends out of the blue.
SPOILER Members of the group die just as you would expect, - among them the black member, which makes As Above, So Below live up to the tired, old cliché that dictates that black people always die in mainstream horror films.
But the eerie catacomb adventure is both impressively made, - shot in the actual Paris catacombs, - and undeniably frightening, - especially if you believe (if just slightly) in hell.
As Above, So Below is written by brothers Drew Dowdle and co-writer-director John Erick Dowdle (Quarantine (2008)). It is a bit as if The Descent (2005), The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Chernobyl Diaries (2012) met with Indiana Jones and had a baby. It is original and brave, and though it tries more than it can fulfill, it is definitely worth seeing.
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Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 5 mil. $
Box office: 41.8 mil. $
= Mega-hit
[As Above, So Below premiered 19 August (Cambodia) and runs 93 minutes. Filming took place on location in Paris, France, including in the real catacombs, which was a very difficult place to shoot. Feldman suffers from claustrophobia and had to take breaks to cope with the anxiety-provoking set. The film opened #4, behind holdover hits Guardians of the Galaxy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and If I Stay, to an 8.4 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it left the top 5 in its second week and grossed 21.3 mil. $ (50.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Germany with 3.3 mil. $ (7.9 %) and Russia with 1.6 mil. $ (3.8 %). The Dowdle brothers has since made No Escape (2015) and are now busy with the Waco TV-movie coming out in 2018, starring Taylor Kitsch and Michael Shannon. As Above, So Below is rotten at 25 % with a 4.4/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of As Above, So Below?
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