Pyramide

When I saw the first trailer of The Pyramid a couple of months ago, I got very excited and hoped it would be good. I would happily welcome a quality brutal horror movie in the setting of archaeology, Egyptian historical monuments, the awakening of ancient demons, Pharaoh curses, mummies. Now that I’ve watched it… I’m not fully disappointed nor disgusted, it has a couple of good things, but it’s a sad shame that someone didn’t make a better use of this opportunity. The titular pyramid itself is one of the good things, the actors have also been fairly well chosen, it’s a pity that they don’t have much to do. The mythology with the god Anubis isn’t completely worthless, either. But then you have the negatives, which are unfortunately more. To begin with, it’s very similar to last year’s As Above So Below (anyone watching this film will remember it). The script. The script never lets the characters react convincingly to what is happening around them. Everyone is very quick to believe that they are being chased by something supernatural (even after one of the girls was scratched in the dark by, well, a cat). They switch at the speed of light from sadness, despair and hopelessness, all dominated by an attitude of “whatever, let’s move on”. The second problem: why the fuck did they put a digi-cat and a digi-Anubis when it’s clear they didn’t have the money for those monsters to look realistic, let alone scary. And it’s so unnecessary, for God’s sake! If they had used some normal skinny dude wrapped in dirty bandages, they could have sold it as a mummy, would have saved a lot of money and would have been a lot more effective than the digital crap that crawls up in the end and makes the audience burst in laughter – really, I tried not to, but it wasn’t possible. When things are not seen but only heard, it works pretty well and a couple of those scenes do have an atmosphere, but then the lights turn on and it goes to hell. And I also wonder why did it have to be another found-footage, especially when in this film, this format has a terrible effect on the credibility of the characters’ behaviour (really, at least in the last half hour, they would no longer be carrying the cameras), and the creators don’t even properly stick to it during the film but interrupt it with normally shot takes. So, the format doesn’t help in anything, on the contrary, it hurts things, so another unnecessary minus point of choice. Although I didn’t get bored – I liked some of the atmospheric scenes, the interiors, and the jump-scares – the aforementioned complaints force to give it one star less than I gave As Above So Below, which avoided the digital mess and stuck to its format. (05/03/2015)

It can be seen in the picture's quality that it has a higher budget because it was supported by people from Fox, but it didn't really show in the quality of the effects. These movies probably still fly, even though I feel like they were exhausted four years ago, maybe even earlier. There are very few that stand out and make you feel like it's not just a repetition of what has been said so many times before. "The Pyramid" is not among the more interesting ones. (25/03/2015)