With more corpses buried underneath its streets than there are people currently living above ground, the city of Paris seems like the perfect setting for As Above, So Below, a rambunctious little horror film that hopes to turn the labyrinth of catacombs and tunnels running beneath the city of three million into an unopened closet housing our worst fears.

But despite this seemingly perfect horror setting, director/writer John Erick Dowdle and co-writer brother Drew (the guys who brought us the effectively creepy The Poughkeepsie Tapes) are never quite able to make their movie as smart as its title may suggest. Instead, As Above, So Below ends up just a loud, nauseating cacophony and mindless blur of vomit-inducing movement.

When the film opens, we meet rebellious archaeologist Scarlett Marlowe (Perdita Weeks), a modern-day  combination of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, as she is continuing her father’s mission to discover the location of the ancient Philosopher’s Stone, a legendary artifact  which is said to turn metal into gold and grant immortality to its holder.

Via a rushed sequence of The Da Vinci Code-like puzzles and cryptic messages (only not nearly as smart), Scarlett and her ex-partner and now reluctant colleague George (Ben Feldman from TV’s Mad Men) learn that the powerful stone lies beneath the streets of Paris somewhere in the endless twist of catacombs used in the late eighteenth century when Louis XVI, to ease the crowding of cemeteries, relocated some six million corpses.

Before traversing the mostly-unexplored maze, Scarlett, Ben, and their claustrophobic camera-man Benji (Edwin Hodge) enlist the help of a mysterious trio of local urban explorers to lead them into the extensive bone-filled network beneath the city. As they plunge deeper and deeper into the morass, each of the group is forced to face their inner-most secrets in a place where the line between madness and sanity becomes blurred.

Nearly every one of the characters sports a GoPro camera on their miner’s helmet -- which is intended to ramp up the pitch-black eeriness by lending the film a guerrilla-style found-footage effect. But since the film isn’t couched in the premise of a lost expedition’s video leftovers, the effect has no relevance here and only serves to muddy the proceedings with jerky movements and digital blotches. It’s sometimes so bad and so difficult to watch that we can’t even tell what’s happening among the ear-splitting screams and sudden cuts to pure darkness. We have The Blair Witch Project to blame for mainstreaming the effect, but at least in that film -- and even later in Cloverfield -- its use made sense in the context of the plot. Some fifteen years on, can we please retire the shaky cam?

Another of the film’s significant shortcomings involves its undeveloped cast of cardboard characters. Though the Dowdles have in the past -- with films like Quarantine and 2010’s Devil (the latter of which relied almost entirely on well-rounded characters) -- displayed an understanding of character over effect, in As Above, So Below that proclivity cannot be found. With so many unrecognizable dirty-faced characters we’ve hardly had a chance to meet, it becomes much easier not to care about any of them. And that’s a death sentence to film based almost entirely on its characters.

With a perfectly formulated setting and a brilliant plot primed to explore those creepy nether regions between reality and imagination, As Above, So Below should have been a creepy little horror gem. But all that terrifying atmosphere and the numerous “gotcha” shots are wasted by poor writing and even less effective camera work. What a shame.

(Released by Universal Pictures and rated “R” for bloody violence/terror, and language throughout.)

Review also posted at www.franksreelreviews.com.