Unearthed, Uninspired, Unwatchable
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if The Mummy had a baby with a Syfy Channel original movie and that baby was filmed entirely on a GoPro duct-taped to a camel, look no further than The Pyramid (2014). Directed by Grégory Levasseur and produced by Alexandre Aja — yes, the man behind High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes — this found-footage debacle tries to exhume ancient terror from the sands of Egypt but mostly just digs its own grave.
The concept sounds promising on paper: a team of archaeologists discovers a mysterious three-sided pyramid buried beneath the desert, only to uncover something deadly lurking within. Unfortunately, what’s lurking inside isn’t a curse — it’s poor lighting, worse dialogue, and a CGI jackal that looks like it was rendered on a 2002 PlayStation.
Found Footage Fatigue: The Ancient Curse of ShakyCam
First, let’s talk about the found footage gimmick — because The Pyramid doesn’t. The movie can’t decide what kind of film it wants to be. One minute it’s a handheld documentary, the next it’s suddenly shot like a polished studio horror. It’s as if the cinematographer had an existential crisis halfway through and just gave up.
At one point, the characters are using a remote-controlled rover to film the inside of the pyramid. The camera quality on this thing apparently switches from “NASA-grade 4K” to “potato” depending on whether the scene needs tension or not.
The end result is visual whiplash — part Discovery Channel special, part Blair Witch Project, and all migraine.
The Plot: Raiders of the Lost Snooze
Dr. Miles Holden (Denis O’Hare) is the team’s resident archaeologist and exposition machine. His daughter, Nora (Ashley Hinshaw), tags along because this movie needed someone young, blonde, and capable of screaming on cue. They’re joined by a few other characters so paper-thin they could double as hieroglyphics — including cameraman Fitzie (James Buckley, The Inbetweeners) and token local Zahir (Amir K), who exists solely to die early and painfully.
The team discovers a previously unknown pyramid buried under the desert, boasting only three sides — which they point out multiple times as if geometry alone were enough to terrify the audience. They send in a robot rover to explore, but when it goes offline, they decide the best idea is to go in after it. Because of course.
Soon, they’re lost in a labyrinth of dust, bad decisions, and narrative dead ends. Someone gets pinned under rubble, someone gets eaten by hairless CGI cats, and someone else gets their heart pulled out by a creature that may or may not have been designed by a first-year animation student.
It’s like watching an episode of Ancient Aliens where everyone dies horribly — except that would’ve had better research and more interesting dialogue.
The Characters: IQs Lower Than Sea Level
There’s something almost awe-inspiring about how uniformly dumb these characters are. They ignore warning signs, trespass in cursed tombs, and bicker about Wi-Fi signals while being stalked by an Egyptian death god.
Nora Holden — our supposed protagonist — spends the entire movie looking mildly annoyed, as if she just found out her latte was made with skim milk. Her father, Dr. Holden, alternates between being an academic blowhard and a man frantically yelling, “We have to get out of here!” every five minutes.
Fitzie, the cameraman, provides comic relief — or at least tries to. His jokes land with all the grace of a mummy falling down a flight of stairs. “We’re trapped in a 5,000-year-old tomb!” he quips, right before being eaten. The laughs are as dry as the Sahara.
The Monster: Anubis, God of Underwhelming Visual Effects
Ah yes, the big reveal — our killer jackal-headed deity, Anubis himself. You’d think a film built around Egyptian mythology would at least make its monster scary. Instead, Anubis looks like the kind of video game boss you’d defeat in the tutorial level.
When he finally appears, he’s less ancient god and more “Halloween store clearance item.” His design is strangely cartoonish, and his movements are about as intimidating as a malfunctioning animatronic at Chuck E. Cheese.
By the time he starts weighing hearts (literally — he plucks them out and puts them on scales), it’s hard to tell whether you should be horrified or just impressed he read the Book of the Dead cliff notes.
Even the smaller creatures — the “emaciated feline” minions — are more laughable than lethal. They look like bald cats with mange and anger issues. Imagine if Cats (2019) had been a horror movie and you’ll get the idea.
The Pacing: Faster Than a Mummy Nap
If The Pyramid has a real curse, it’s boredom. For a movie that’s barely 90 minutes long, it somehow feels like an archaeological dig in real time. The pacing is so uneven it’s practically a topographical map — long stretches of nothing punctuated by brief moments of screaming and CGI dust.
The middle act drags like a tomb-raider’s limp leg, with characters wandering around corridors that all look exactly the same. It’s the cinematic equivalent of watching someone lose at Minesweeper for an hour.
By the time Anubis finally shows up, you’re just rooting for him to finish everyone off so you can get on with your life.
The Dialogue: Unearthed from the Tomb of Cliché
If archaeologists ever excavate a vault full of bad movie dialogue, The Pyramid will be their Rosetta Stone.
“You don’t believe in curses, do you?”
“Something’s down here with us.”
“We have to find another way out!”
These lines are delivered with all the conviction of a high school drama class on Ambien. It’s as if the scriptwriter fed every mummy movie ever made into an AI and said, “Yes, perfect, print that.”
Even Denis O’Hare — a talented actor capable of chewing scenery like it’s fine cuisine — looks embarrassed half the time. You can almost see the moment he realized this wasn’t going to be his Indiana Jones moment but rather his “please don’t put this on my IMDb banner” phase.
The Ending: Sand, Scream, Repeat
The climax, if you can call it that, involves Nora fighting off Anubis, stabbing him, and escaping — only to immediately run into another jump scare and a cut to black. It’s a classic horror non-ending, the cinematic equivalent of a shrug.
Apparently, the film’s grand message is that curiosity kills the cat — or in this case, the archaeologist. And if you’re wondering what happens to the pyramid or Anubis or the lore behind it all… don’t. The movie doesn’t care, and neither should you.
The Real Horror: Wasting a Good Premise
What’s tragic about The Pyramid is that it could have worked. Egyptian mythology is a goldmine for horror — curses, gods, tombs, and centuries of superstition. But instead of exploring that, the movie plays like an uninspired mash-up of The Descent and The Mummy Returns, without the suspense or the fun.
It’s a film that mistakes darkness for atmosphere, yelling for tension, and CGI dust for visual style.
Final Verdict
⭐☆☆☆☆ — One mummified facepalm out of five.
The Pyramid is a tomb best left sealed. It’s not scary, it’s not clever, and it’s definitely not fun. The only curse it delivers is the one you’ll mutter when you realize you spent 90 minutes watching people get killed by digital cats and mythological incompetence.
Grégory Levasseur may have unearthed an ancient pyramid, but he buried his career in the process. The moral? Maybe some things really are better left buried — especially bad scripts.
So if you ever find yourself in Egypt and stumble across a mysterious three-sided structure, take my advice: don’t go inside. Just take a selfie, make a wish, and move on — because whatever’s waiting in there, it’s probably just The Pyramid playing on a loop for all eternity.
