The Pyramid
Director: Grégory Levasseur
Starring: Ashley Hinshaw, James Buckley, Denis O'Hare
109 mins; Class 15;
KRS Releasing Ltd
Over the centuries, explorers who have dared attempt to uncover the secrets of the ancient wonders of the world, particularly of the pyramids, have come to a sticky end.
Among unexplained incidents attributed to the ‘Curse of the Pharaohs’ are the 1699 expedition in which a Polish ship carrying two Mummies (of the Egyptian, not the other kind) was haunted by spectral visions and brutal storms; a 1803 incident where four expedition members entered the Pyramid of Khafre, never to be seen again; and, in 1922, Tutankhamun’s Tomb was opened and a series of horrific deaths befall the excavation team.
Had the film-makers behind The Pyramid chosen to explore any of the above incidents a little further, a better film may have developed than this. The couple of sentences I have just described contain more plot detail and depth than the film itself, which is little more than a tired return to the worn-out clichés that tend to form the foundations of this kind of movie.
Dr Nora Holden (Ashley Hinshaw) and her father Miles (Denis O’Hare) head an expedition which leads to a surprising discovery. Using NASA satellite imaging technology, they have uncovered a three-sided Egyptian pyramid buried deep under the desert.
Paper-thin characters, predictable plotting, shallow dialogue
Political protests in nearby Cairo, however, lead the Egyptian authorities to force the closure of the expedition. Determined not to leave without entering the pyramid, Nora, Miles, documentarian Sunni Marshe (Christa Nicola), cameraman Terrence Fitzsimmons (James Buckley) and robotics expert Michael Zahir (Amir Kamyab), venture inside, only to find…
… Paper-thin characters, predictable plotting, shallow dialogue, meagre scares and bland performances in what feels like a rehash of the recent As Above So Below.
One problem with this film is its over-reliance of the by now musty use of the found footage genre, which here is completely useless anyway, given that most scenes seem to take place in semi-darkness making it more difficult to figure out what is happening.
Said plot consists of a convoluted, and ultimately weakly-executed, tale of Egyptian gods and cannibalistic cats determined to escape their confinement within the pyramid. Yet, the build-up to the bursts of bloody action that occur throughout tension free, the characters unremarkable and ultimately unsympathetic, so we really couldn’t care less about them.
That they are such stereotypes works against them and it helps not a jot that they are lumbered with rubbish dialogue.
The moral of the story seems to imply that some things should remain buried forever. I couldn’t agree more.