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As those of you who have followed our show probably know, I'm not the biggest fan of found footage based on my negative experience with The Blair Witch Project back in the day, a fact that I seem to reflexively reiterate as though it was more than a movie I didn't enjoy and something that truly scarred me.  Funny how that happens, as to my recollection it was just a bad time at the movies where I thought a good one was to be had.  Gripping the bat a bit too tightly in that regard...if I watched it again I may even find that whatever burr was in my saddle that day had less to do with the film itself, but I'm not at all eager to find out.   That said, the found footage film has become a sub-genre with it's own lineage now going back over twenty years and hundreds of films (in the modern sense, where films like Peeping Tom and Cannibal Holocaust toyed with the notion decades before but without inciting a movement) and if we're to cover horror in film in it's entirety, we can't well ignore the thing as much as I sometimes think I'd want to.  Watching this one, what really stuck out to me was that some fifteen years and countless of iterations of found footage after The Blair Witch Project, co-writer and director John Erick Dowdle used not only the trappings of a found footage film from a technical standpoint but also reconstructed the notion of an eerie place mixed with lore in a way that infused his film with the spirit of that original film, while also improving on the formula.  Not only building on the heart and soul at the foundation of that original excursion into the medium, but also in bringing in other influences in a way that felt to me to be both ambitious and effective.  The density and the pacing felt much more right to me than the recollection of BWP, a liberty of hindsight and foundation, whereas in defense of the prior film the film makers great asset was their ingenuity, and despite my protests their proof of concept was an undeniable success at the box office, as an inspiration to other film makers, and to more horror fans than not.   One advantage to not getting invested in a certain kind of art or entertainment for whatever reason, especially one that establishes a legacy of it's own as a sub-genre, is that by simply opening the mind enough to get over personal bias, there's a treasure trove of work to pick through.  By allowing oneself to be open to sampling the cream, there's certainly something to be found as having risen to the top.  In that sense, As Above So Below was very satisfying.  It's still not my jam, that found footage thing, but as it goes I liked a lot of what this film had to offer.  Chzuck liked it too.  Much more in fact.  One might suspect that if he were allowed to select movies for coverage on the show this would have been one of them.   Just so we're clear, and apropos of nothing other than my inability to stick the landing in this written introduction, I choose the movies around here.  Had Chzuck picked this one, I'd say he brought a good one to the table, and I enjoyed discussing it.   Cheers! Shonny Constant 3.3.2020     Let us know what you thought of the film, or just join us for any kind of horror chat at one of the links below   Talk Horror To Me Facebook Group   Instagram @TalkHorrorShow @Shonny.Constant   Twitter @ChzuckBean    Cover art for this episode by Crystal Mielcarek!  Find more of her work on Facebook, Instagram, or Smushbox.net