As Above, So Below

A piece of crap whose frantic pace would wake up Snow White from her enchanted sleep, but in terms of content, it fails miserably to keep up with itself. The basic plot may be trivial and the premise of an adventurous quest for a historical artefact suits it quite well, but all the horror elements are either completely unoriginal and underdeveloped (who was the mysterious woman outside the bar?) or try so hard to be cool that they become ridiculous (the feet sticking out of the ground was the funniest moment). And as usual, I was not at all satisfied with the ending, which compared to the previous 80 minutes or so, which worked hard to maintain a decent psycho-terror atmosphere and the curiosity about what will happen next, seems terribly sloppy and bland. The overall feel in the cinema wasn't bad at all, but I wouldn't have missed anything if I had passed this film. 50% (10/05/2014)

To me, it's a shame that the creators of As Above, So Below chose the fake documentary form, which limited them too much. For example, all the characters had to see the hallucinations/delusions/ghosts of others, which were also recorded by their cameras, and that made me more upset than intrigued. The attractive idea of the film gradually sort of drowned in it, and the finale, which was definitely supposed to be bigger, except for the great last “head down" scene, bored me. (02/22/2021)

After a long time, a horror movie that captures our attention with its subject, grabs us by the throat with its trailer, and confirms with the film that good ideas (even if subtly collected and rewritten from elsewhere) still work in this underestimated genre. It would be very easy to criticize a few overly easy riddles that Scarlett effortlessly solves or even the premise itself, but that would take away from the fun of the whole concept. The found footage format finally makes sense again, and those few damn well-crafted moments (most of which are stolen by the black-haired girl) were so intense that I found myself cheering on the main characters more and more, even if it only meant they would get got around the next corner. (07/11/2015)

Considering how much I hate, despise and curse the found footage genre, As Above, So Below deserves nothing but praise and also that only uninteresting shit like Jessabelle and Ouija went to the cinema this year. Fortunately, the film is engaging and draws you in from start to finish, it doesn’t even have the typical 40 minute of uninteresting and epileptic boredom, here it more or less pedals along at full throttle all the time. The film maintains a perfect atmosphere, beautifully mixes mystery, adventure, historical and horror elements, it is shot in a very stylish way, no shaky camera, no grainy image; this is how it should look like! My only regret, however, is the lack of scares, although one of them was very decent. 80% (11/19/2014)

I really enjoyed this story at the beginning because I simply love mysteries, references to history, mystery, and alchemy. But this film has a clear genre structure, and even though there are interesting moments in the later parts, I was very annoyed by the fact that they just scream, breathe loudly, and everything is essentially just a classic found footage variation, only this time with the Philosopher's Stone, which is still a novelty. And that's it. (01/13/2015)