As Above, So Below

An archaeologist searching for the tomb of a famous alchemist thinks she knows where it is in the catacombs beneath Paris. She enlists the help of a local expert on exploring the catacombs, who calls himself Papillion, along with his two friends/partners, and brings along a cameraman and an unwilling linguist expert. Things rapidly get strange, as they are forced to travel through a tunnel Papillion declares as "evil", and people begin seeing things. They eventually find the tomb and the Philosopher's Stone, but they still have to find a way out, and that's when things start really going downhill.

You know how these found footage horror movies tend to go. The things that you and the characters catch a glimpse of simultaneously, so you can both freak out at once, or the things you see they don't, because they aren't looking in the direction the camera is pointing. The survival rate is higher than I expected. The first couple of deaths are brutal, but of a fairly straightforward variety. After that is when things start to get really bizarre, the next death in particular. It fits with the idea of where they are, but it also felt very much at odds with the movie up to then. Things had been obviously creepy, and not following typical laws of the universe as we understand them, but not in quite as obvious of ways. Then that goes out the window and it felt a bit odd, like we'd stumbled into a different kind of horror movie. I'm not sure I dislike the shift, but I'm sure I wasn't a fan. Your mileage will vary.

One thing I appreciated is I spent much of the early part of the film criticizing Scarlett for being a terrible archaeologist, and putting everyone in danger with a seemingly mad obsession with finding this tomb. George, her Aramaic expert in particular, who keeps telling her he will not go underground, and she keeps making him get closer to the entrance, insisting to Papillion that yes he will, don't worry, we're going to talk about it. It's like, maybe you don't want someone who hates underground spaces because of childhood trauma with you in a massive and extremely dangerous complex of underground tombs, but her pursuit trumped any concerns about the damage she left in her wake.

But the movie presents her with a chance to redeem herself, and it actually works. She gets some closure, confronts what's really driving her, and is able to make some amends. I've said before I don't like horror movies where I like some of the characters, but they all die horribly, so I enjoyed how this one turned out.