The Pyramid

"The Pyramid" (2014, Grégory Levasseur, Silvatar Media, Fox International Productions, 20th Century Fox) is a found footage film set in Egypt.

The film is set in 2013 during the time of the Eqyptian protests against the then Egyptian president, Morsi. A father-daughter team of archaeologists, Dr. Miles Holden (Denis O'Hare) and Dr. Nora Holden (Ashley Hinshaw), have discovered a lost, submerged, pyramid, near the Great Pyramid. They assemble a team to film the discovery and plan to investigate it further. Upon opening the entrance, however, a noxious gas emits killing one of the workers.

With this news and with the impending uprising in Giza, the team are ordered to leave their discovery and return home. An instruction that they obviously ignore. Instead, they send in their rover robot secretly, which is quickly destroyed by whatever is lurking in the tomb...

Naturally, they decide to go in anyway to retrieve what remains of the expensive rover kit, quickly get hopelessly lost and are soon faced with the perils of the labrynthine tomb and its murderous inhabitants.

Fristly, I'll mention that this film has not been loved by the critics and I can see why: its dialogue isn't the best; it is unclear whether it's a found footage film or not - jumping from the cameraman's on-screen camera to normal film view all too often; the characters are annoying and fatally flawed; and we are shown way too much of the big bad.

But, to the film's credit, it's got a few nice jumps and at least they had the guts to try making an Egyptian themed horror not about a rampaging mummy! If only they had shown a little more restraint in how much of the baddy was shown, I think that this little plot nuance could have made a more successful film.

For me, it was too similar to some much better 'lost in an ancient place' movies that I've seen recently ("The Descent" and "As above, so below" spring to mind), which were just more successful in creating their atmosphere. It also smacked a little much of a bad "Indiana Jones" wannabe film.

However, yes, it's corny but it delivers the goods to a point, and is definitely not the worst film I've seen recently. So, while it's not a masterpiece, it shouldn't be completely ignored.

[Image: 20th Century Fox]

Hani