The
massive structure at the center of “The Pyramid” is a three-sided
pyramid uncovered in the desert outside Cairo after spending untold millennia
hidden deep beneath the sands. Technically speaking, this means that the
structure in question is actually a tetrahedron and not a pyramid but let us
get down to brass tacks—there are very few people out there who would
willingly pony up good money to see a film entitled “The
Tetrahedron,” especially a dippy run through the usual horror clichés that
plays like a cross between “The Blair Witch Project” and the Steve
Martin ditty “King Tut,” only lacking the cinematic grace of the
former and the raw terror of the latter.
But back
to the pyramid, which it shall be continued to be referred because it is
slightly easier to spell than “tetrahedron.” It has been uncovered by
a group led by archaeologist Miles Holiday (Denis O’Hare) and his daughter Nora
(Ashley Hinshaw), a duo who are always squabbling because her approach to the
job includes such new-fangled ideas as satellite technology, theories about the
connection between the pyramids and alien civilizations (no doubt culled from
repeated viewings of “The Being from Another Planet”) and a dig
wardrobe that Lara Croft might find skimpy, while he is an old fuddy-duddy who
is more concerned with dusting artifacts with little brushes and stuff.
Nevertheless, they both agree to bring a documentary crew, consisting of
ambitious reporter Sunni (Christa Nicola) and weasly cameraman Fitzie (James
Buckley), to film their findings. In other words, this is a found-footage
movie, the notion of which should inspire more chills by itself than anything
in the film proper.
Despite
political upheaval in Cairo that requires them to pull out of the area and a
cloud of toxic air released once the pyramid is penetrated, the four, along
with fifth-wheel techie Michael (Amir K), are forced to enter the structure and
it is only a matter of minutes before they find themselves completely lost and
disoriented. As they stumble around in the dark trying to find a way out, they
find themselves encountering the usual perils one normally encounters after
penetrating a pyramid: collapsing floors, crashing rocks, hieroglyphics
foretelling doom at every turn and yes, even an army of marauding mutated feral
cats with a taste for anything’s flesh. As the five continue on, their numbers
inevitably begin to dwindle in various messy ways and it becomes apparent that
there is something else in there with them that makes those feral cats seem
about as threatening as Heathcliff by comparison.
In news
that will probably not startle too many of you, “The Pyramid” is
pretty much junk from start to finish. For starters, it is pretty much the
exact same thing as the recent “As Above/So Below,” lacking only the
Parisian setting and the irritating typography, and while that may not mean
much to the vast majority of you, the horror junkies who are the ones most
likely to check this one out are likely to be really annoyed by this. The
screenplay by Nick Simon and Daniel Meersand is little more than a collection
of dramatic contrivances, characters so thin and irritating that one longs for their demises
more than their survival and some very risible dialogue (“You aren’t going to need the hatchet, but just in
case. . .”) Gregory Levasseur, who in the past has worked with Alexandre
Aja on such supremely loathsome genre entries as “High Tension” and
“Mirrors,” makes his directorial debut here and demonstrate no
particular feel for the job—there is no real tension to be had, the closest
thing to actual scares are the most rudimentary “BOO!” moments
imaginable (though there is one that does kind of work despite its obviousness)
and the whole thing is shot so darkly, perhaps inevitable considering the
setting, that there are long stretches where it is difficult to discern what is
going on.
And yet, despite
the general crumminess of the whole enterprise, I cannot help but feel a tiny
bit of affection for “The Pyramid” and its cheesebucket B-movie
trappings, even though I wouldn’t dream of going so far as to actually
suggest that you spend your hard-earned money on it. Thanks to the
end-of-year awards derby, I have sat through a lot of movies in the last couple
of weeks—films featuring people triumphing over all means of
physical/emotional adversity, charismatic figures leading their people on marches
to freedom and armies of people laying waste to mountain fortresses and the Stephen Sondheim songbook. Some of
these have been good and some have been bad, but after a couple of weeks of
cinematic heavy lifting on that scale, sometimes a swarm of mutated feral cats
can hit the right spot, if only momentarily.
Source:: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-pyramid-2014
