A Disappointing Continuation

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The first must-see film of the year.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This is not a well made movie. The preview trailer belies the true plot of the movie and the initial film was a total let down. The film looks like it could be half stock and half found footage. The plot appears to be an adventure to solve the mystery of a found, buried pyramid. This implies a mummy riddle with lost explorers. What is found is a block maze in the dark, ancient booby traps, demonic cannibal cats, and a grotesque Egyptian God straight out of a sci-fi tv channel. The entirety of the movie was poorly executed and the characters were not developed. The film is not scary in any co text with every move being as predictable as the next.

The characters in this film are so annoying that you want them to die. However, when they do die, these deaths are usually quite silly. This film has no clue about style. It doesn't know what it is. At times it looks like a friendly family film reminiscent of Indiana Jones; but then it switches into really nasty gore; and so it switches back and forth. The film is quite silly throughout, though the silliness increases as we approach the climax - if you can call it that.So how do you describe this mess? Think a cheap Indiana Jones clone combined with Alien vs. Predator, only with a tiny budget, crappy actors, and an incompetent writer. In this film, a pyramid is always filled with light whose source is impossible to discern, people reach the bottom of the giant pyramid in about a minute, and archaeologists can read long texts in hieroglyphs on the walls in seconds, by just casually glancing at them. I know they are experts, but this is ridiculous. AVP flashbacks, anyone? Oh, and these 'experts' manage to get lost in the pyramid literally a few minutes from entering the building. Fantastic.Another example of bad writing: the characters find out they are all infected with some disease that is making parts of their body fall off. Kind of makes it pointless to even hope they survive the monsters in the pyramid, since they are all dead already.And the monster is silly.I didn't enjoy this ride at all. I was baffled most of the time, I was never really scared, and I couldn't bring myself to care about the events on screen.

When I first learned about this movie (seeing it available for rent at my neighbourhood video store), I was puzzled, because it was from a major Hollywood studio and yet I hadn't heard of it. Subsequent research on my part uncovered that the studio didn't give the movie much publicity or distribution to theaters, and after watching the movie I think I can see why. It gets off to a decent start - there is a little thrill by the setup of finding an ancient Egyptian pyramid and wondering what may be inside. However, after the first twenty or so minutes, things start to go downhill. The protagonists certainly don't act like professional archaeologists as they make their way into the pyramid, and they make a lot of decisions that would be considered stupid for any kind of person. The worst thing about the movie, however, is that it's not at all scary or even mildly creepy - it seems to be going right by the book instead of adding originality or surprises. It certainly doesn't help that the CGI special effects are really bad, giving the movie both a cheap feeling and a phony feel. So in the end I'm glad that I waited for a copy of this movie to show up in my local library so I could then see it for free.

You know how sometimes "Reality" shows and "documentary" programs feel not only fake, but outright silly? Well, imagine a Found Footage / Mockumentary film that attempts to mimic these shows instead of actual documentaries. That's exactly how The Pyramid feels.The plot and story are basically the most basic use of the all too familiar template. A group of explorers find "the discovery of the century!", are told to drop the project on account of it being too dangerous, but no, they can't, for the sake of science and all of humanity! Shockingly, things go from bad to worst, and now instead of struggling to have their name attached to the discovery, they struggle to escape with their lives.Another thing one simply can't overlook is the film's inability to decide its own genre. It appears to be Found Footage until the point where it's no longer convenient, so the director decides to cheat. Very unprofessional and annoying, Mr. Grégory Levasseur.The one thing I can say I liked about this film is the antagonist. Its appearance and characteristics are the only thing resembling creativity and an attempt at being original, and even the downright amateur level CGI can't spoil that. Other than that? Low level writing, low level directing, low level film. If you're a fan of this "dangerous archaeology" type of film, you might enjoy this enough to not feel your time had been wasted. In any other case - this one is simply not worth the trouble.