The Pyramid (2014)

The only thing worse than Found Footage Horror, is lazy Found Footage Horror. You know? The kind where the camera is inexplicably in a room the crew have never been in before filming every single character while non-diegetic music plays and awful, awful CGI scarpers by? Yeah, that kind. I didn't just think that _The Pyramid_ wasn't a good movie, it honestly made me genuinely mad. Final rating:½ - So bad it’s offensive.

The Pyramid is a found footage movie but part of a new wave along with As Above so Below released the same year. I don't have a problem with the format, it allows the telling of a story from a different perspective to a regular film and if done right gets you closer to the event. The story is a classic horror setup, the finding of a hitherto unknown pyramid and the evil that waits within. The claustrophobic corridors and crawl spaces really work with the close camera work to ramp up the tension. Horror often relies on protagonists making stupid decision, which is often infuriating. Mostly the team were just overconfident, the events are beyond anything they could prepare for so I feel this film avoids that annoyance. There are some really haunting images and some impressive deaths given what would be a limited budget. Overall this was a very enjoyable horror movie.

The cast list probably fires enough warning shots for us to realise that this is going to be nonsense - and on that front, at least, it doesn't disappoint! A group of archaeologists are poking around inside a previously unexplored Egyptian pyramid when things start going bump in the dark. The building becomes a bit unstable, and next thing they are all being persecuted by a manifestation of Anubis, not best pleased that his slumbers have been disturbed. What now ensues, well you can easily guess. What makes this worse is that director Gregory Levasseur has decided that we are going to have to watch this as if we really were inside the structure. I'm guessing he hoped the darkness, the shadowy torch-light style photography (think "Blair Witch" 1999), might help to create some menace. Wrong! It just comes across as cheap and cheerful but with no sign of Boris Karloff or Christopher Lee. On that score, the acting and dialogue are mutually banal ("thank you captain Egypt"!), it's got loads of hysterical screaming which, again, annoys rather than scares - and I was rooting for the hungry fiend from pretty early on! Will anyone escape... who cares?

The first couple of members of the archeological team really go through some painful injuries. The characters do some stupid things (of course) and the creature is kind of neat until you notice how bad the CGI is. Nora and Sunni were fun to look at, but outside of that, there's nothing to see here.

The Pyramid starts off with a glimmer of hope—it sets up an interesting premise in the first act that had me thinking this might actually be a solid movie. But as the story transitions from the first to the second act, things quickly fall apart. What could have been a decent film turns into a frustrating experience, with the acting being barely convincing (if at all) and the script making strange, illogical choices that drain the life out of the story. The characters make bizarre decisions that don’t feel real, and their emotional reactions often come off as forced or inconsistent. Some scenes made me wonder if the actors themselves even understood what their characters were supposed to feel. It’s hard to stay invested when the performances lack any real depth or energy. The cinematography doesn’t help either—it’s a mess. The perspective constantly shifts, and not in a way that adds tension or style. Instead, it feels like the filmmakers couldn’t decide what they wanted to show or how they wanted to tell the story. At times, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to focus on, and that lack of direction made it hard to connect with anything happening on screen. Overall, The Pyramid fails to deliver. It starts with potential but loses its way quickly, leaving behind a poorly executed story, inconsistent visuals, and performances that don’t connect.