Loud And Lousy, 'The Pyramid' Is Must-Skip Horror

By Joel Wicklund in Arts & Entertainment on Dec 8, 2014 4:30PM

James Buckley, Christa Nicola, Ashley Hinshaw and Denis O'Hare in "The Pyramid." (Photo: © 20th Century Fox)

The Pyramid is noisy, abrasive and artless excrement, fittingly dumped into theaters on a weekend curiously devoid of wide releases (awards contender Wild, expanding to more screens later, did premiere in limited release). Holding back their other holiday season biggies, the major distributors seemed fine with surrendering this week's box office loot to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 again. The exception was for 20th Century Fox, whose marketers decide to "gift" the public with The Pyramid.

Screenplays are rarely filmed exactly as written, but if what is on the screen is even an approximation of the script credited to Nick Simon and Daniel Meersand, it's appalling anyone would pay for such insultingly weak work. There are unverified stories of screenplays being sold without ever really being read. Perhaps a terribly overworked studio reader, with a boss clamoring for a cheap-to-produce horror script, scans it and passes it along with a recommendation, thus setting production approval in motion? And then, through sheer laziness or overcrowded schedules, no one else reads it until the project is too far along to stop the train? It's the only conceivable explanation for this shoddy feature's existence.

The rote story in a snapshot: archeologists excavate an ancient, rare 3-sided pyramid, which turns out to be a labyrinthine prison and may be the actual domain of the Egyptian god Anubis — he of the famous dog-headed appearance. Needless to say, deadly peril awaits them, and it is usually accompanied by earsplitting sounds and gratuitous gore.

The premise is beyond overused, but that's not really the problem. Skillful writing and filmmaking can make even the most familiar narratives enjoyable, but neither quality is present here. The characters are paper thin, and the dimwitted dialogue is an embarrassment of labored exposition. Much of the movie seems to be in the tired "found footage" realm, as a documentary crew follows the archeologists, but don't look for any stylistic continuity or even basic logic in the visual choices made by director Grégory Levasseur. Point-of-view shots change randomly and angles shift with on-the-fly carelessness. Whether we are watching from a cameraman's perspective or not is often a question Levasseur obviously never bothered to ask himself.

Levasseur was discovered by Hollywood as the co-writer of fellow Frenchman Alexander Aja's High Tension, which was embraced by many horror fans as something special. It's not. Even a daffy twist ending doesn't salvage more polished brutality masquerading as suspense. But somehow High Tension gave Aja a reputation as a major genre director. He cashed in with several remakes (The Hills Have Eyes, Mirrors, Piranha 3-D) and Levasseur came along for the ride as his co-writer on a couple of these.

The Pyramid marks Levassuer's directorial debut and he seems to lack even a basic feel for the craft. The only trick up his sleeve is a sudden shock cut to some bloody body trauma, accompanied by a booming sound effect to startle — but never frighten — the audience. His incompetence behind the camera is not helped by inferior CGI beasties that look like chintzy video game figures.

In front of the camera, the cast is pretty much at sea with the idiotic script. Denis O'Hare, a fine character actor and familiar TV presence (American Horror Story, True Blood) withstands the debacle better than his co-stars, but even he barely seems relevant to the dull and deafening proceedings.

Horror fans, myself included, are too often like junkies...so in need of a genre fix that they subject themselves to cinematic injections sure to produce bad results. The movie industry has long banked on this often indiscriminate fan base and cheap production costs to yield low-risk rewards. Here's hoping The Pyramid flops badly enough to at least slightly discourage this unhealthy pusher/user relationship.

The Pyramid. Directed by Grégory Levasseur. Written by Nick Simon and Daniel Meersand. 89 mins. Rated R. Starring Ashley Hinshaw, Denis O'Hare and James Buckley. Now playing in theaters nationwide.