Three Films Make A Post: They Can Be Slaughtered Like Any Beast

Devil (2010): Given that that I’m one of the few people who rather enjoyed director John Erick Dowdle’s As Above, So Below, I was quite willing to give this one a chance despite it being tainted by a “story by M. Night Shyamalan” credit. Alas, while it’s slickly directed, this has a plot of utmost stupidity (did you know the devil likes to arrange elevators getting stuck so he can harvest the souls of sinners in them?), cartoon-level characters, and – in full Shyamalan form even though the man didn’t even write the damn script – at times plays like a propaganda movie for a particularly unhinged form of Christianity, where you can tell the devil is present because then toasts fall with the marmalade side down (seriously). And while that’s certainly good for a laugh or two, it’s not a basis for a film that quite obviously wants to be taken very very seriously indeed.

Dead Rising: Watchtower (2015): If you’re in the market for something that makes some of the Resident Evil movies look like art, this misbegotten, shot-in-Canada, videogame movie might be just the right thing for you. There are some moments of competent filmmaking here, and even some fun scenes, but mostly, this is one of those films that just can’t decide if it wants to play its zombies for laughs or for terror and certainly isn’t well-written enough to successfully do both at the same time. This is a film that just can’t decide if it wants to be knowingly silly or dramatic, and so ends up being neither.

Male lead Jesse Metcalfe is atrocious and the rest of the cast – despite Virginia Madsen and Dennis Haysbert earning their pay checks – isn’t much better. Add to that a tedious length of nearly two hours wasted on a plot that probably would have worked for seventy minutes, and you have exactly the crappy videogame zombie movie you expected going on.

In the Dark Half (2012): This on a very other hand is a wonderful exploration of sadness and loss through fairy mythology and folk rituals with subtle, often eerie direction by Alastair Siddons and a script by Lucy Catherine that’s so good, even its plot twist works, which it of course also does because it is actually part of what the film has to say and not just a stupid gimmick.


The acting by Jessica Barden, Tony Curran and Lyndsey Marshal is just as impressive, and the film as a whole just doesn’t get a more in-depth write-up all its own from me because it would mostly consist of me making the blogging version of cooing noises, as well as a few stifled sobs.

As Above, So Below (2014)

With her combination of academic degrees and more practical adventuring talents, Scarlett (Perdita Weeks) makes a rather good pulp heroine (and probably thinks guns are for amateurs). She’s seeking the Philosopher’s Stone supposedly hidden in Nicholas Flamel’s secret crypt, to finish the work her father began before he committed suicide.

After a short intro visit to Iran to acquire some information needed to decode Flamel’s gravestone, Scarlett grabs her rogue clockwork repairman friend and expert in Aramaic George (Ben Feldman) and follows the hints Flamel laid into the Catacombs of Paris, with a group of Parisian urban explorers led by one Papillon (François Civil) as their native guides. They are accompanied by Benji (Edwin Hodge), who makes a documentary about Scarlett’s search, because why not? As it goes with things alchemical, the search becomes rather more dangerous and more metaphorical than anyone could have expected.

After a start that suggests director writer John Erick Dowdle will do a sort-of Dan Brown-ish, Indiana Jones and horror-influenced bit of POV catacomb running, As Above, So Below’s second half makes clear that he and his co-writer Drew Dowdle do have a working knowledge of various interpretations of the meaning of the alchemists’ search for the Philosopher’s Stone. Given the literacy level in filmmaking circles, this comes as a pleasant surprise, yet also, alas, leads to the part of the film more than one professional film critic professed to not understand, even though the film’s ending should be quite clear to anyone with even the most basic knowledge of what it is about. I’d wager even a visit to the Wikipedia page about the Philosopher’s Stone should educate anyone enough to understand a film that isn’t exactly cryptic and only avoids to explain itself with a sledgehammer. But what do the film and I want, film critics who either have an education or are willing to put in five minutes of Internet time to understand something quite simple? Absurd, clearly.

Anyway, before I really get to ranting, let’s say nice things about a film that is pretty much ready-made to be enjoyed by me, seeing as it combines an ass-kicking (okay, living statue-bashing) heroine in the pulp mode played with what looks like a sense of fun, a treasure hunt full of dubious clues, distortions of time and space, people having to face their own demons in a very concrete way, silliness, utter silliness, and some surprisingly well-thought out parts into a fast and generally fun bit of genre mashing that probably would have felt at home in pulps like Weird Tales or Adventure in one of its more free-wheeling phases. Sure, Dowdle’s direction never really manages to make the Catacombs and the places below it feel as claustrophobic as they should, but then this is in feel more an adventure than a horror film, though one with a mild psychological and metaphysical angle.

Approached from that direction, it becomes easier to appreciate the film’s tempo, the way it pushes its characters ever downward into deeper trouble, never giving them much space to think. It also explains the horror atypical ending which – spoiler! – actually sees some of the characters surviving and psychologically (and potentially morally) strengthened.

But clearly, given the hatred poured out over this little film, your mileage may very well vary (but please don’t tell me if it does).

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