Welcome to Hell — Sponsored by GoPro
Some horror movies drag you to the edge of your seat. As Above, So Below drags you into the Paris Catacombs and leaves you there to die of secondhand embarrassment. Directed by John Erick Dowdle, this found-footage descent into madness tries to blend archaeology, philosophy, and claustrophobic terror — but mostly succeeds at giving the audience motion sickness and resentment issues.
It’s a film that asks, “What if The Da Vinci Code had a baby with The Blair Witch Project, and that baby grew up to write bad fanfiction about Dante’s Inferno?” And then it answers: “You’d get this sweaty, incoherent, GoPro-infested mess.”
The Setup: Tomb Raider Goes to Therapy
Our fearless protagonist is Scarlett Marlowe (Perdita Weeks), an “accomplished scholar” whose résumé includes breaking into sacred tombs, defiling historical artifacts, and nearly killing everyone she meets. Think Lara Croft if Lara’s Ph.D. was in reckless decision-making.
Scarlett is obsessed with finding the Philosopher’s Stone — not the Harry Potter one, but the one that can supposedly turn metal into gold and grant eternal life. Because apparently eternal life is something you want after watching this film.
The movie begins in Iran, where Scarlett sneaks into a cave moments before demolition. Why? To grab a mystical artifact called the Rose Key, which she needs to find Nicolas Flamel’s mythical stone. In the process, she witnesses a vision of a hanged man and narrowly escapes being blown up — a sequence that sets the tone for the rest of the movie: shaky, loud, and deeply confusing.
From there, she travels to Paris and ropes in her ex-boyfriend George (Ben Feldman), a man whose hobbies include translating dead languages and wondering why he ever dated Scarlett. They team up with a cameraman named Benji, whose only purpose is to hold the camera and eventually die for our sins.
To navigate the Catacombs, they recruit three underground explorers — Papillon, his girlfriend Souxie, and their friend Zed. These cataphiles know the tunnels better than anyone, which is why they immediately lead everyone into Hell.
The Descent: Abandon All Logic, Ye Who Enter Here
The team descends into the Catacombs through a forbidden tunnel, because no horror movie protagonist has ever heard of “boundaries.” Once inside, the group encounters ominous singing cultists, creepy sculptures, and walls that seem to rearrange themselves whenever convenient to the plot.
Scarlett insists on pressing forward because “the stone must be close,” which is code for “we haven’t filled our body count yet.” Eventually, they meet a guy named La Taupe (“The Mole”) — a man who’s been living underground for years and looks like he was rejected from a Les Misérables reboot. He guides them deeper, because apparently taking directions from a possibly insane hermit is a solid survival strategy.
The team finds a chamber filled with treasure and a preserved Templar Knight. Scarlett grabs the Philosopher’s Stone, which immediately triggers a cave-in, killing La Taupe. Because in this universe, stealing holy relics always comes with a home renovation penalty.
Scarlett soon realizes the stone can heal wounds — which she demonstrates by magically fixing Souxie’s arm. This is the movie’s brief “wow, maybe there’s hope!” moment before everything goes to flaming, subterranean hell.
They find a crypt marked with Dante’s “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” which is also the perfect warning for anyone still watching.
The Horror: Now With 80% More Screaming and Darkness
From here, As Above, So Below devolves into an endless parade of jump scares, existential hallucinations, and people shouting each other’s names. The camera work is so frantic that even the ghosts look dizzy.
Characters die in quick succession, but not before giving incoherent speeches about regret. Benji gets yeeted into an abyss by a ghost mom, Papillon is sucked into a fiery car (don’t ask), and Souxie is murdered by La Taupe, who apparently took a part-time job as Satan’s intern.
The surviving trio — Scarlett, George, and Zed — stumble upon animated statues, rivers of blood, and enough metaphors for guilt to fill a freshman philosophy paper. At one point, a wall statue punches George in the throat, because even the architecture has had enough of this nonsense.
Scarlett tries to use the stone to heal him but realizes she grabbed a fake one. That’s right — even the Philosopher’s Stone ghosted her.
The Revelation: The Real Stone Was the Friends We Lost Along the Way
Scarlett sprints back through the blood tunnels (which look suspiciously like tomato soup) to return the stone to its proper place. Along the way, she faces off against CGI hands growing out of the walls, because subtlety is for cowards. She catches a glimpse of her dead father, realizes she’s been lugging around emotional baggage heavier than her camera rig, and suddenly discovers that she herself is the real Philosopher’s Stone.
Yes. You read that right. After an hour and a half of demonic screaming, collapsing tunnels, and people dying in every conceivable way, the moral of the story is that the power was inside her all along.
Somewhere, even Nicolas Flamel is facepalming in his grave.
The Escape: As Below, So Whatever
With newfound enlightenment, Scarlett heals George (with a kiss, naturally), and together with Zed — the most irrelevant character to survive a horror film since Cabin Fever’s dog — they run from literal demons toward a mysterious hole.
Scarlett figures out that the only way out of Hell is to confess your sins and leap into the abyss, which, to be fair, sounds like a reasonable reaction to sitting through this movie. George admits he let his brother drown, Zed admits he’s a deadbeat dad, and Scarlett admits she ignored her suicidal father’s last call. Then they all jump into the pit and—poof!—they land safely near Notre-Dame, crawling out of a manhole like sewer rats who’ve had an existential awakening.
Zed walks away. Scarlett and George embrace. The credits roll, mercifully signaling your release from cinematic purgatory.
The Acting: Sins of the Script
Perdita Weeks throws herself into the role with admirable commitment, which is unfortunate because the script gives her all the emotional range of a GPS that occasionally screams. Ben Feldman does his best impression of “confused academic who should’ve stayed home,” and Edwin Hodge’s Benji spends most of his screen time hyperventilating before dying.
François Civil’s Papillon could have been interesting, but the script treats him like a disposable baguette. Everyone else exists purely to die or yell “SCARLETT!” at least three times before their inevitable demise.
The Aesthetics: Found Footage, Lost Direction
Yes, the movie was actually filmed in the Paris Catacombs — a marketing point the studio bragged about as if filming in a claustrophobic ossuary somehow replaces having a plot. The cinematography consists entirely of headlamp POVs, jerky camera shakes, and scenes so dark you start adjusting your own screen brightness out of pity.
The sound design alternates between whispering voices and bone-crunching bass drops that scream, “Jump scare incoming!” It’s like watching a YouTube haunted house video on 2x speed, directed by someone who thinks “loud equals scary.”
The Philosophy: A Deep Dive into Pretension
The film wants to be profound. It quotes Dante, flirts with alchemy, and dangles themes of redemption and guilt — but ultimately, it’s about people running from a rock monster. It’s the cinematic equivalent of that one friend who keeps saying “everything’s connected” while failing to pay rent.
The phrase “As above, so below” is meant to symbolize the reflection between Heaven and Hell, the spiritual and the physical. In this movie, it just means “whatever happens upstairs happens in the sewer.” Deep, man.
Final Thoughts: Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Stream Here
At its core, As Above, So Below isn’t scary — it’s just loud. It confuses claustrophobia with character development and philosophy with Wikipedia quotes.
It could have been a smart, eerie meditation on sin and mortality, but instead it’s a shrieking scavenger hunt through Dante’s nine circles of nausea.
By the time our heroes emerge from the manhole, you don’t feel relief — you feel envy. Because they escaped Hell. You’re still in it.
Verdict: 1.5 out of 5 skulls.
A found-footage film that lost everything else — pacing, coherence, and dignity. It’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Dumb, buried deep beneath Paris, forever haunting the brave souls who dare to stream it.
