As Above, So Below

An archaeologist looking for Flamel's philosopher's stone leads a team into the restricted catacombs beneath Paris. The tunnels stop obeying geography. The way down is the way through something else.

The Dowdle brothers got permission to shoot in the actual catacombs, so the claustrophobia is real: the cast crawled through genuine ossuaries stacked with real bones, in tunnels too tight to turn around in.

The film's structure is Dante, a literal descent through levels toward something at the bottom, and each character meets a personal guilt made physical.

The head-mounted cameras are used well, and the sequence in the too-small tunnel is one of the most panic-inducing things in found footage.

It is uneven and the mythology is thin, but the location is truly unlike anything else in the format.