![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/As-Above-So-Below.jpg\" "\\"As")
<\/p>\nBy Bob Garver<\/p>\n
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People like to complain about how the Christmas season starts earlier every year. They\u2019re right, but I\u2019ve also noticed that the Halloween season starts ridiculously early too. I work at Hershey\u2019s Chocolate World in Times Square and we\u2019re already pushing the Halloween candy. I\u2019ve walked past a few darkened stores that I can tell are going to be open any day now selling costumes. And the biggest new release over Labor Day weekend was a horror movie called \u201cAs Above\/So Below.\u201d<\/p>\n
To be fair, it\u2019s not that big of a hit. It opened in fourth place behind holdovers \u201cGuardians of the Galaxy,\u201d \u201cTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,\u201d and \u201cIf I Stay.\u201d I can\u2019t remember the last time I had to go down to fourth place to find a movie to review. It\u2019s even arguable that it lost the holiday weekend to \u201cThe November Man,\u201d a movie that has a slightly higher cumulative total, but opened on Wednesday, giving it a two-day head start. Still, my point about horror movies doing well on Labor Day weekend remains the same. The top ten Labor Day performers of all time include 2011\u2019s \u201cThe Possession,\u201d both \u201cJeepers Creepers\u201d movies and, at #1, the 2007 remake of \u201cHalloween.\u201d With or without quotes, Halloween movies really do dominate Labor Day.<\/p>\n
So what does \u201cAs Above\/So Below\u201d have to offer? Not much, really. It\u2019s an underwhelming Found Footage horror movie trying and failing to grab the \u201cParanormal Activity\u201d crowd. The story follows a group of disposable adventurers looking for the Philosopher\u2019s Stone. Actually, that\u2019s the European version of the premise. In America we\u2019d say that the story follows a group of disposable adventurers looking for the Sorcerer\u2019s Stone. At first I thought it was a derivative coincidence that these characters are looking for an artifact that shares its name with the driving force of the first \u201cHarry Potter\u201d book, but it turns out they\u2019re one and the same.<\/p>\n
The Stone is supposedly hidden in a system of caverns underneath Paris. The caverns also serve as a mass grave, the final resting place for millions of plague victims. It\u2019s a creepy setting made more unsettling by the fact that that certain areas don\u2019t have very durable overhead support, so cave-ins are an issue. Plus, as a cave, there are uncertain drops and crawlspaces (though it\u2019s hard to feel claustrophobic when you\u2019re in a movie theater that more than likely is uncrowded). And since this is a horror movie, the cave also includes some psychos and demons.<\/p>\n
The scares aren\u2019t very effective. For starters, there are long stretches where nothing happens that is even supposed to be scary. A lot of the film is just the team solving lame riddles and finding secret passages. But even when the film tries to be scary, it falls flat. The violence isn\u2019t shocking, and there\u2019s less of it than you\u2019d think. The monsters and demons they encounter are good only for popping out at them before our heroes defeat them with one strike. Then there\u2019s some nonsense about the team having to face their haunting pasts, which has more to do with imagery that only makes sense to them than universal terror.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m giving \u201cAs Above\/So Below\u201d my lowest rating of one star, but it isn\u2019t a film that constantly insults my intelligence, patience or taste. Quite frankly, it doesn\u2019t have the ambition to do any of that. It\u2019s just a film with nothing going for it. Some of it is bad, but most of it is dull. If I could think one thing I liked about this movie, I\u2019d bump it up another half star. I like that I\u2019ll probably have forgotten about it by this time next week, but that doesn\u2019t count.<\/p>\n
One Star out of Five.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Above\/So Below\u201d is rated R for bloody violence\/terror, and language throughout. Its running time is 93 minutes.<\/p>\n