As Above, So Below (2014)

I was reading through some horror recommendations on Reddit, and people were saying good things about this movie, which I noticed was available on Netflix, but only for a few more days (at the time of searching), and that was all the motivation I needed to give it a screening. It's a found footage movie, that plays out like a cross between Tomb Raider and Full Metal Alchemist, but framed as a horror story. Imagine Lara Croft searching for the Philosopher's Stone in the catacombs under Paris, which turns out to be the gateway to Hell. Yeah. It's pretty effective. It goes a little deeper into its own lore than most movies of its kind (according to IMDb's trivia section, heavy parallels can be drawn to the Nine Circles of Hell in Dante's Inferno, but as someone who's actually read Dante's Inferno, it's mostly subtext that the casual viewer doesn't need to know), although it loses a little bit of traction with its vague rules governing the workings of magic. The whole experience is enhanced by actually being filmed on location in the catacombs under Paris, although the movie leans conspicuously on using supernatural nonlinearity (as disorienting as this can be), as well as straightforward backtracking at one point, as an excuse to recycle familiar rooms and passages. It's pretty ambitious for a found footage movie, and it mostly works. Not enough to raise it from the depths of the subgenre, perhaps, but definitely worth a watch.