‘As Above, So Below’: Film Review — hollywoodreporter.com

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” is the inscription uncovered by a gang of 20-something treasure hunters in the catacomb-hopping horror flick, As Above, So Below. But the warning could easily apply to viewers checking out this rather hopeless mash-up of The Descent and [Rec], not to mention a dozen other found-footage movies that have clogged the screens over the last five years. Hardly credible, even for a film claiming that the gates of hell lie a few hundred feet below Paris (if anywhere, they can be found in an overcrowded Metro car with no air conditioning), this low budget effort from director John Erick Dowdle and writer-producer-brother Drew Dowdle provides a few late scares after plenty of eye-rolling setup, with said scares due more to the heavy sound design than the action itself. A late August release in Europe, followed by a Stateside bow during a quiet Labor Day weekend, could drum up modest numbers for Universal in the first frame. After, this forgettable cave dive will be confined to VOD limbo before descending to the abyss.

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