The Pyramid

When your film is being flogged on the back of a heavily listed producer's directorial work from almost a decade ago, you know you're in trouble. Alexandre Aja did a superb job with the remake of The Hills Have Eyes, but we're not quite sure what that has to do with this endurance test from sometime cohort and first-time director Grégory Levasseur. Trying desperately to replicate the claustrophobic vibe of The Descent and failing miserably, this is bottom-drawer horror that didn't deserve a cinematic release.

We're dropped somewhere in the desert in Egypt, where a documentary crew are chronicling the archaeological dig of a 'lost pyramid'. When they're shut down by the government because of riots in nearby Cairo, they have a couple of hours to find something worthwhile hidden within. So off they go, camera in hand, only to get torn to shreds - which they take a bloody long time to get to, so to speak.

From the very first scare (where the sound is turned up to inaudible levels in order to enforce self-defecation), the tone is firmly set. The Pyramid is simply a silly film designed solely to distract you for a couple of hours - but sadly, even aesthetically, it's incomprehensible. Starting off as a handheld jobbie, it conveniently switches to over-elaborate cinematography, meaning that any chance you had of becoming engaged enough to actually feel scared are blown. District 9 transitioned between the two well; this film does not.

You'll also spend the majority of the running time willing a painful death on all of the characters. There is not one redeeming person featured, with James Buckley (Jay from The Inbetweeners) acting as the comic relief in a similar way to TJ Miller in Cloverfield, but faring poorly with an miserable shite of a character who just moans a lot, instead of quipping. What's the point of having him there if he wasn't given any decent lines?

He's not the only one, though; lines ofdialogue (after violent deaths)such as "Let's get out of here" and "it's not safe" are delivered with such a lack of urgency you'll wonder if the director actually bothered his hole turning up on set. No one seems aware of the situation they're in and as a resut, it all feels very 'Syfy channel'.

Watch The Babadook instead.