John Erick Dowdle
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The Descent (2005)
Directed by Neil Marshall
influenced As Above, So Below (2014)
Plot Visuals Themes
As far as horror movie premises go, that's a decent one, even if it is heavily referential, giving shout outs to everything from Neil Marshall's masterful subterranean chiller "The Descent" to the aforementioned "Flatliners," and a whole bunch of movies in between (the opening awkwardly apes "The Da Vinci Code," among others).
It’s a real shame, too, because director John Erick Dowdle–whose credits include 2008’s muddled Quarantine and 2010’s effective Devil— creates moments that recall the claustrophobic terror of the awesome spelunking epic The Descent .
In fact, the first part of As Above recalls the unnerving underground discomfort of The Descent, another caves-are-terrifying thriller.
In terms of the sheer claustrophobia seeping from its every pore, "As Above, So Below" reminds favorably of 2006's terrifying cave-diving thriller " The Descent ."
Instead, it inspires thoughts of the superior "The Descent," a genre classic that involved a group of women trapped in a cave.
He certainly borrows a few lessons from Niel Marshall’s The Descent – and then, takes those ideas a step further – using the setting of subterranean exploration as THE principal scare source and threat throughout the film.
But regardless of how the muted kudos is parceled out, the end result is a moderately entertaining tale that borrows Christie’s Ten Little Indians template of putting a group of strangers together and having them get picked off one by one.
At least, that's what he spends his time doing in Devil, a pocket-size supernatural thriller that plays a bit like Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians retold by an unstable Sunday School teacher.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Directed by Daniel Myrick
influenced As Above, So Below (2014), The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)
Plot Visuals Themes
Perdita Weeks is a strong and capable female lead, the film manages to borrow concepts from " The Blair Witch Project " and " Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade " and put its own spin on them, and the addition of alchemy is both warranted and a breath of fresh air to the horror franchise, but "As Above, So Below" mostly resorts to cliché tactics when it has so much more right within its grasp.
Faux-documentary style filmmaking was hard to come by before 1999’s “The Blair Witch Project,” a film that kickstarted a genre with a creative and commercial bang.
To the degree that it works ? in pictures like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity - it's because the ?captured on video?
It's all too easy to imagine how he and his cowriter brother, Drew, pitched their creation: The Blair Witch Project meets Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code, with a touch of Insidious!
While the film has a reasonably engaging cast and some decent scares, the script feels like an uneasy blend of The Blair Witch Project and Tomb Raider.
The climax, I suspect, was more of a ruse on part of the filmmakers to unnerve audiences in a movie theater; because a select few often buy into this technique as more than just stylized fiction – a problem that stretches back to “The Blair Witch Project” – the implication that the source of such vicious killing sprees may be watching on somewhere in a nearby movie theater no doubt would add ominous suggestions to the experience of easily manipulated moviegoers.
Broadcast Signal Intrusion (2021)
Directed by Jacob Gentry
influenced by The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)
Visuals
For simplicity’s sake, below is a little vision board (of sorts) to help you visualize the tapes in question, including a photo from the unsolved Max Headroom Signal Hijacking of 1987 that inspired the film, a still from John Erick Dowdle’s The Poughkeepsie Tapes , and another from Milos Mitrovic & Conor Sweeney’s Homer_A (2017) .
There are camcorder moments that unsettle, almost as The Poughkeepsie Tapes accomplishes with its evidence footage, and yet clue-seeking thrills sell desired excitement short.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced As Above, So Below (2014)
Plot
Perdita Weeks is a strong and capable female lead, the film manages to borrow concepts from " The Blair Witch Project " and " Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade " and put its own spin on them, and the addition of alchemy is both warranted and a breath of fresh air to the horror franchise, but "As Above, So Below" mostly resorts to cliché tactics when it has so much more right within its grasp.
No strangers to the found-footage game, the Brothers Dowdle (as they call their production shingle) already handled the lesser U.S. remake of [Rec], and while that movie at least had a decent pitch, this one feels like an oddly serious take on the tongue-in-cheek Venice cave sequence from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
The other part is that the film's screenplay feels like it happened because the writers, brothers John Erick (who also directs) and Drew Dowdle, couldn't decide between ripping off The Da Vinci Code, the first two Harry Potter books, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , The Descent , The Divine Comedy, and Tomb Raider, and so they decided to go ahead and do all of them at once, and just for funsies, to mortar the dismal construct that resulted together with some insulting half-baked nonsense about people fighting their inner demons in what may or may not be the actual, literal Hell.
With a plot like that, you might expect something slight and subtle, like "Bug" or a horror-tinged "12 Angry Men" or, maybe even more appropriately, Hitchcock's "Rope" or "Lifeboat."
Remember, there’s a creepy basement and if you’ve seen the trailer, it feels like Cregger is paying homage to the 2008 found footage thriller “Quarantine,” a remake of the much better 2007 Spanish film [*REC].
Surprisingly, the movie winds up living up to its auspicious beginning as it plays against its own conventions in the final act resulting in the best found-footage horror film since the first Paranormal Activity (2007).
To the degree that it works ? in pictures like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity - it's because the ?captured on video?
It’s a shame, because such a fresh concept is wasted on a mixture of Indiana Jones, National Treasure, and every found footage horror movie you’ve ever turned off out of frustration – close, but no cigar.
The script written by Dowdle and his brother Drew is a neatly woven package of ideas that borrow elements from a variety of notable sources, including “The Descent,” “The Exorcist” and, to a more eccentric degree, “National Treasure” and “The Mummy.”
Half “National Treasure, ” half “The Descent,” but not half as good as either, the pic unearths found footage purgatory with startling accuracy.
The Exorcist (1973)
Directed by William Friedkin
influenced Devil (2010), As Above, So Below (2014)
Plot Themes
The script written by Dowdle and his brother Drew is a neatly woven package of ideas that borrow elements from a variety of notable sources, including “The Descent,” “The Exorcist” and, to a more eccentric degree, “National Treasure” and “The Mummy.”
Second, it is an unabashed horror film with genuine Judeo-Christian spiritual convictions, which seems to raise the ire of a critical establishment that insists on a mandated separation of church and cinema (with all due forgiveness given to The Exorcist because at least it was made during the cynical ’70s, even if it is anything but).
Devil, which mixes elements from disaster flicks, mysteries, police procedurals, and demonic classics such as Damien and The Exorcist, starts with a bang when an unknown office drone throws himself out a window of a high-rise at 333 Locust St. (No high-rises there in the real Philly!)
While its fright tactics are plucked from various other movies like The Exorcist and any thriller set within a confined space (think Panic Room), it still has several ghoulish twists within its brisk 80 minutes, yet never quite rises above the simplicity of its tale.
The mob is relentless, barging through doors and climbing to the roof of the hotel in which Wilson, Bell, and two daughters are bunkered — they're people-as-velociraptors, the latest update of the inhuman street gang from John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced As Above, So Below (2014)
Plot
Imagine the excitement of the rolling-boulder opening scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” stretched to feature length, then subtract such vital ingredients as John Williams’ pulse-elevating score, Douglas Slocombe’s visceral cinematography and Harrison Ford’s wry charisma, and you get “As Above, So Below,” in which a Lara Croft-like heroine assembles a team of expendable “cataphiles” (as catacomb obsessives call themselves) to locate the Philosopher’s Stone.
This week's "As Above, So Below," a grainy, archeology-themed found footage movie that uneasily mixes "Raiders of the Lost Ark" with "Flatliners," is the first effort under this new initiative.
As Above, So Below could have been a cross-breed between Tomb Raider, Raiders of the Lost Ark (that’s a reach, but stay with me), and Cloverfield.
For those hoping to find some truly disturbing secrets buried for generations beneath the surface, track down Gary Sherman’s 1972 “Death Line” (aka “Raw Meat”) instead.
Any horror film fan worthy of the name knows that the entrance to hell is in Brooklyn — a fact established in 1977 by Michael Winner’s The Sentinel — and no attempt to transfer this accolade to Paris is worth considering.
As far as horror movie premises go, that's a decent one, even if it is heavily referential, giving shout outs to everything from Neil Marshall's masterful subterranean chiller "The Descent" to the aforementioned "Flatliners," and a whole bunch of movies in between (the opening awkwardly apes "The Da Vinci Code," among others).
It's all too easy to imagine how he and his cowriter brother, Drew, pitched their creation: The Blair Witch Project meets Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code, with a touch of Insidious!
The other part is that the film's screenplay feels like it happened because the writers, brothers John Erick (who also directs) and Drew Dowdle, couldn't decide between ripping off The Da Vinci Code, the first two Harry Potter books, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , The Descent , The Divine Comedy, and Tomb Raider, and so they decided to go ahead and do all of them at once, and just for funsies, to mortar the dismal construct that resulted together with some insulting half-baked nonsense about people fighting their inner demons in what may or may not be the actual, literal Hell.
With a plot like that, you might expect something slight and subtle, like "Bug" or a horror-tinged "12 Angry Men" or, maybe even more appropriately, Hitchcock's "Rope" or "Lifeboat."
West's Devil, which followed its female protagonist, Samantha, through an evening of house-sitting, created rising tension out of banal incidents (discordant family photos, unopened doors, a pizza delivery) that weren't particularly menacing by themselves but, imbued with sinister, uncanny implications, made for a suffocating slow-burn.
Of the two major theatrical releases he's been involved in (2009's House of the Devil and this film), he starts Pied Piper-ing you, easing you into a world that just isn't quite right.
AUSTIN — Following his grindhouse-loving House of the Devil with a ghost film that could have been mainstream in the ‘80s, Ti West exhibits less stylistic fetishism with The Innkeepers while remaining solidly outside of contemporary fashions.
In "The Innkeepers," West moves from the icky exploitation zone of "Devil" into a friendlier, mid-'80s vibe; up until near the end, in fact, you could mistake it for a low-key haunted-house comedy.
We go to movies like The Innkeepers, Ti West’s follow-up to his delightful old-school creep-out The House of the Devil , to explore and experience fear from a similarly safe remove.
In The Innkeepers, writer/director Ti West’s first true project since his acclaimed 80’s retro horror film The House of the Devil, a pair of likeable slacker clerks, Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), are left in charge of the Yankee Pedlar Inn on its last weekend of business.
CHICAGO – Being a hardcore fan of anthology series like “The Twilight Zone” and “Tales From the Crypt,” the simple set-up of “Devil,” the new horror film based on a story by and produced by M. Night Shyamalan, intrigued me — five people are stuck in an elevator and one turns out to be the devil.
The first in producer M. Night Shyamalan’s Night Chronicles series (from his story, written by Brian Nelson and directed by John Erick Dowdle) feels, in fact, just like a Tales From the Crypt episode stretched out to 80 minutes, and the padding results in a number of loose ends and red herrings.
Continuity blurs together like a hazy, half-baked combination of The Poughkeepsie Tapes and I Spit On Your Grave , and then Eve unhinges with Braveheart on the mind.
The screenplay, a sharp, unadorned affair penned by Brian Nelson (Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night), is predicated on a Twilight Zone-ish premise: Five apparent strangers--a young mechanic (Logan Marshall-Green), an older woman (Jenny O’Hara), a sharply dressed younger woman (Bojana Novakovic), a temp security guard (Bokeem Woodbine), and a sleazy businessman (Geoffrey Arend)--get on an express elevator one morning in a Philadelphia high-rise and find themselves trapped when the elevator inexplicably stops somewhere halfway up the building.
And it was written by Brian Nelson, who was the screenwriter for "30 Days Of Night" and "Hard Candy," who seems like a natural fit for this sort of story.
The actual director, John Erick Dowdle, previously made Quarantine , and the screenwriter, Brian Nelson, penned Hard Candy .
The first in a trio of "Night Chronicles," Devil was conceived by Shyamalan, who farmed out the project to a terrific team, including screenwriter Brian Nelson, who penned Ellen Page's breakout film Hard Candy and the vampire classic 30 Days of Night; and director John Erick Dowdle, who infuses Devil with the same sickening sense of claustrophobic dread that permeates his 2008 fight pic, Quarantine.
Based on an original concept from Shyamalan?s sketchbook, Devil?s surprisingly clever script was written by Brian Nelson, who hit pay dirt with his Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night , both excellent pieces of work.
Screenwriter Brian Nelson (30 Days of Night, Hard Candy) is the one who filled in the details of M. Night’s story, and he wisely keeps the dialogue between the passengers inside the box snap-crackling, while keeping us engaged with movement and physical action carried out by the players on the outside.