As Above, So Below
(2014) 93 Min.
Rated: R (slight gore)
Country: USA
Director: John Erick Dowdle
Starring: Perdita Weeks, Ben Feldman, Edwin Hodge, François Civil
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
A group of people search for the philosopher’s stone in the Paris catacombs.
Synopsis:
The film opens with Scarlett (Weeks) in Iran trying to get into the heart of a cave that is about to be blown up. She’s seeking the clues that will help her find the one thing her father has been searching for his entire life: the Philosopher’s Stone.
Many believe he was mad, but Scarlett takes his research seriously and has devoted her life to finding the stone as well. In Iran she’s able to uncover an large stone cow with inscriptions on it written in Aramaic. She video tapes all of it. The alarm is sounding and the explosives set will begin to collapse the cave soon.
She runs out just as some of the explosives start to set off. The entire room is filled with some and briefly she sees a man hanging from the ceiling by a noose.
Finally she’s able to exit the cave with her footage.
The film skips forward. She’s in Paris being filmed for a documentary by a man named Benji (Hodge). After finding the cow in Iran she’s in Paris. She talks about Nicolas Flamel who was an alchemist and was searching for the Philosopher’s stone. According to Scarlett this stone has magical properties including the ability to turn metal into gold as well as healing properties and can give eternal life.
Scarlett informs the camera that she has a friend who can translate the writings she found on the cow. She meets up with her friend George (Feldman) in a bell tower. He’s reluctant to help her out since once before Scarlett left him in a jail in Turkey.
Eventually George is coaxed into translating the writing. Scarlett informs Benji that she is searching for the Philosopher’s Stone which she has come to understand is hidden below Nicolas Flamel’s grave.
Beneath Paris is a large catacomb that extends miles beneath it. George has a map which he overlays on a map of Paris. The catacombs seem to stop near the graveyard, but Scarlett believes that somehow they can breach the wall. George recalls a time when a few houses fell in a sinkhole below Paris near the catacombs and believe that there’s a hidden area there closed off from the rest of the catacombs.
George, Benji and Scarlett take a guided tour through the catacombs and wonder aloud how they’ll be able to get into the deeper parts. A man standing slightly off the tour suggests that they find a man called Papillon at a club. When they look back the man has vanished.
George, Scarlett and Benji are at the club. They are able to find Papillon (Civil). When they ask him to guide them underground he scoffs at them. Scarlett promises him that there is great treasure there. Papillon asks for half, but Scarlett would give him all of it in search of the stone. George promises half and Papillon agrees to guide them through the catacombs on those terms.
The next day Papillon has a van full of gear along with two other friends, Souxie and Zed. As they are preparing their gear, Benji notices a scar on Papillon’s hand but the others tell him not to ask about it.
The group heads for a train tunnel and George insists that he will not go with them. Scarlett pleads with him to follow and insists he will join them. The group nears a small indentation near the bottom of the tunnel wall. This will be their entrance. As they are about to enter, a man leaps onto Papillon and in the struggle the others go into the cave. Somehow the entrance is sealed and everyone is inside. Papillon boasting that no police can catch him.
The group has no choice but to press on. George is visibly shaken by being in the catacombs. Scarlett explains that his brother drowned inside a cave.
Papillon tags a wall with “Pap!” as his signature and they walk deeper into the catacombs. Further inside they hear some strange singing. Papillon instructs them to ignore it, but briefly peeking through some walls we see a strange ritual being held. Papillon jokes that there are many strange people in the catacombs.
They come to an end which is very narrow and has a pile of bones. Benji doesn’t want to climb over the bones and the group sees a walled up path. Papillon tells them that the walled path is somewhere they cannot go. He tells them of a friend he knew named La Taupe, which means The Mole, who lived in the catacombs and knew much of it, but he wouldn’t go down that path. Finally one day he went down that path and was never seen or heard from again.
The group decides to climb the mound of bones and Benji is the last to climb. As he makes his way over the bones he feels stuck between the low ceiling and the bones. He starts to panic for a while but finally moves some of the bones away. And it’s just in time as the ceiling collapses where he was before.
They turn around and find themselves near another blocked path and everything looks suspiciously the same as before. Benji is angry that he almost died and they could’ve taken the easier route through the path. Papillon reluctantly decides to go through the path and they unseal it.
As they enter the new route they see a graffiti of “Pap!” which Papillon denies ever writing. They also find a piano. George thinks it looks like the piano they had back home and plays “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” but the same key that would not play on his home piano does not play on this piano either. He’s a little spooked.
The group hears a phone ring and they see someone approaching them. It’s La Taupe, but he seems very quiet. He tells them he will show them the way out.
The phone continues to ring and Scarlett insists on finding it. She finds a phone and picks up the receiver. There’s a garbled man’s voice on the line and then it’s dead.
La Taupe seemingly guides them further down and deeper into the catacombs. They come to what seems like a dead end, but there are inscriptions. George and Scarlett figure out that there’s locked door that one must open by removing the correct stone. They manage to figure it out and a stone rolls away to reveal another room.
Inside the room there is a tomb with a man lying on a coffin. He looks ancient but well preserved as if sleeping. Scarlett figures out they must swim under water to reach the room with the Philosopher’s stone.
The next room is filled with dazzling treasure behind a grate. There is also an Egyptian wall. Scarlett and George discover that the Philosopher’s stone was hidden in the wall and Scarlett pulls it out.
Papillon, Siouxie and Zed, meanwhile, are trying to pull off the grate for the treasure. Scarlett shouts that it’s a trap before the ceiling collapses.
In the aftermath La Taupe cannot be found and Siouxie has a gash on her arm. Scarlett is able to heal the arm by sprinkling on powder from the stone.
They realize they’re in a room that is the reverse of the room they were just in. Scarlett before talked about the symbolism of the phrase “as above, so below”, as world is so is the self and the philosophy of Nicolas Flamel.
They venture on into the reverse world tomb. In that tomb there is a body, but it is far more withered. It also emits a wheezing breathing noise.
La Taupe also appears in the room. Everyone is surprised and Siouxie tries to venture near him. He in turn attacks her and bashes her head against the rocky floor. He vanishes.
The group try to save her by using the stone, but it cannot bring back the dead. Papillon reluctantly leaves her body behind as they venture onward.
As they venture onward they have to go down another hole. The group goes down safely except for Benji who is the last to go. Something happens and he is thrown down the hole, killing him. Scarlett sobs over his body for a while. The group then press onward.
As they climb over bones George starts to see his little brother in the water beneath them. He is urged to ignore it and press on.
The group rounds a bend and a large car on fire appears. There is someone inside the car burning. They beckon to Papillon. Papillon cries out that he didn’t mean to leave him there. He gets sucked into the burning car and buried into the rock.
The rest of the group move on, running quickly in the darkness. Faces can be seen in the stone and one of them turns to life, biting George on the neck. He lies on the ground bleeding with only Zed and Scarlett left. The Philosopher’s stone will not work on the wounds and Scarlett theorizes that there must be another stone in the wall for this world.
Scarlett asks Zed to watch over George. She runs back through the other apparitions and sees a man on a noose who she runs past. She finally reaches the wall and inserts the stone, but there is no other stone left.
She sees her reflection in the gold trimming on the wall and has an epiphany. She runs back to George and Zed. She reaches the man on the noose and hugs him. She admits that she should have picked up the phone when her father called her. She releases herself of this guilt and continues.
She reaches George and places her hand over his wound and kisses him, apologizing for how she treated him. George’s wound is healed. The three venture on.
They reach an area with only a deep hole. They have no more climbing equipment, but Scarlett assures them that if they are able to make peace with their past that they should come out fine.
George admits that he felt great guilt over his brother’s death since he promised he’d return with help to save him but they did not return in time. Zed admits that he has a son that he has denied he fathered for a while. After this the three of them jump into the hole.
They land in another room with no opening and just a manhole on the floor. They press the manhole down and see that below is the night sky and trees. The trio exit through the hole and find themselves right-side up on a Paris street. The group embrace after their ordeal.
A video plays of Scarlett’s previous interview by Benji saying that all she really wants to discover is the truth.
Review:
The film has a very interesting setting. The catacombs of Paris are very large and someone can get lost in catacombs and die. There is a very real world threat to entering them. So it was a bit disappointing when the film reveals that the story is, instead, about a legendary thing such as the Philosopher’s Stone. It somehow takes on a magical feel.
The film does use real concepts and things rooted in history. The film takes these real world things and weaves a story about acceptance and forgiveness. That’s somewhat bizarre given the setting, but it’s also kind of refreshing.
The expectation here is horror, but what we get is more akin to an adventure with a few gory deaths and a few jump scares. If taken as a thriller, then this film is entertaining. It does move beyond the realm of believable and does quite a few silly things. It’s especially strange to see the group emerge from a manhole by hopping out feet first, but this is also a film where ghost-faces bite people. Anything is plausible when the wall can bite you.
One aspect that the film could have done without is the first-person camera angle. They could’ve set it up so that there were cameras on the helmets for first-person thrills, but kept the rest of the film out of the shaky camera zone.
This film reminded me a good deal of The Descent. That film also had a bit of self-discovery in it and involved squeezing through tight places and scary things in dark caverns. There’s even a claustrophobic scene were Benji is trapped as a cave-in is about to happen. This scene also happens in the Descent and it ends almost the exact same way, with everyone getting out alive and the scene used merely for tension.
I would recommend the film to anyone who has an expectation for an entertaining film with a bit of research behind it as well as an interesting location. If going down long endlessly dark corridors seems like a threat, this might be the film you want to see. It’s by no means revolutionary or exceptionally thrilling, but it is a little fun.