Ok, maybe it wasn’t a good idea watching this before going to visit the Paris catacombs in a couple of weeks — but hey ho, it was definitely worth the watch.

So when my boyfriend told me about this film, I thought that the concept was immediately interesting; being something which differed to the usual horror film. I mean, the characters were mostly likable, the situations eerie to the point of me being too scared to go out to the kitchen alone and the story itself being consistently alluring.

Right, so the storyline. To put it briefly, the film is about a group of young adults attempting to find Nicholas Flamels, Philosophers Stone. When my boyfriend mentioned the Philosophers Stone, admittedly I laughed. Due to the fact that me being me, I thought that they just copied Harry Potter…not realizing that 1) Nicholas Flamel was a real person and that 2) The Philosophers Stone was not just something that Voldermort wanted for the elixir of life.

The group within the film attempt to venture through the Parisian catacombs in an attempt to find this, but of course it is a horror/thriller so obviously everything is not what it seems. Including a couple of jump scares, this P-O-V filmed movie has a certain eeriness about it that really did terrify me. Maybe it was due to the fact that the catacombs are a real place or maybe it was because I think that some of what happened in the film could actually happen in real life. Throughout the film, the group realize that the only way to get out of the catacombs is to go deeper and deeper within them- leading them to the entrance of hell, where a number of apparitions appear and some very disturbing scenes untwine.

What made this film so great in my eyes is that, even though I’m usually not a fan of ‘found footage’ or everything been filmed on a handheld camera, this film really did utilize realism. Whilst including obvious horror film traits which embarrassingly made me hide behind my hands a few times. The characters were overall believable, which is usually hard to achieve within this genre. So that also has a lot to be credited for.

Without saying a lot, the ending of the film was also pretty good- which is usually hard to achieve with horror films. Usually, we are just left with a pretty average ending, but in this case, I believe that it left the film in a good place.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this film- to anyone who likes thrillers and similarly to films like The Conjuring, films with a different and less stereotypical plot.