THE PYRAMID

 

Publicity poster for The Pyramid (© Grégory Levasseur/Silvatar Media/Fox International Productions/Atmosphere Pictures/20^th Century Fox – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 2 November 2023, I watched the sci fi/fantasy-themed horror movie The Pyramid, whose horror quotient was unrelenting, fully explaining – and justifying – its R rating!

Directed by Grégory Levasseur, and released in 2014 by 20^th Century Fox, The Pyramid takes its title from a mysterious, newly-discovered, subterranean pyramid in Egypt that uniquely possesses only three sides and is therefore of immense scientific interest. Father and daughter archaeologists Drs Miles and Nora Holden (Denis 'O Hare and Ashley Hinshaw), accompanied by documentary film makers Sunni Marsh (Christa-Marie Nichola) and Terry 'Fitzie' Fitzsimmons (James Buckley) plus local guide Michael Zahir (Amir K), foolhardily decide to enter this strange pyramid in order to rescue the remote-controlled rover vehicle that they'd sent in earlier to explore and record the interior, despite having been warned off by the authorities.

Shortly after they enter the pyramid, however, the internal floor suddenly collapses beneath them, plunging everyone deep down inside the very bowels of the pyramid, where all manner of horrors await the now well-and-truly imprisoned and imperiled team, hopelessly lost amid the winding, labyrinthine passageways and endless, enshadowed catacombs.

These horrors include a feral pack of voracious hairless feline monsters (recalling the real-life hairless sphynx cat breed, but writ large and ferocious) that swiftly and savagely attack them, killing Zahir when he becomes trapped under falling rocks. Yet these cryptozoological critters from the crypt aren't even the major threat facing the team, a threat that lurks in the shadows, unseen for much of the movie but leaving telling, bloody traces of its presence, before it ultimately makes its shocking, jump-scare entrance.

 

The terrifying visage of Anubis, who is entirely computer-generated in this film, and whose bloodthirstiness here is actually a far cry from the much more benevolent Anubis of traditional ancient Egyptian mythology (© Grégory Levasseur/Silvatar Media/Fox International Productions/Atmosphere Pictures/20^th Century Fox – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Think canine-headed ancient Egyptian deity of the dead, deliberately entombed alive inside this pyramid many millennia ago... Yes indeed, Anubis himself, still very much active, and still very much intent upon performing his assigned duty of weighing the heart of anyone brought to him against a feather to determine whether they are pure enough to enter the After Life. If they aren't, Anubis consumes their heart (at least in this movie; in traditional ancient Egyptian mythology, conversely, he throws rejected hearts to a crocodile-headed monster called the ammut to devour instead).

And how does he obtain their heart in the first place? By tearing it out of their still-living body's chest with his clawed hand, as poor Miles all too soon discovers! Grim, very grim!

Moreover, as if there weren't already enough unexpected shocks waiting to greet me within this in every sense dark movie: at the precise moment that the team abruptly fell into the pyramid's dark depths when the floor collapsed, my DVD of this movie froze, and refused to progress further, meaning that I had to eject it, then reinsert it, and jump chapter by chapter through the movie till I reached just beyond the scene of the floor collapse and then rewind slowly back to where it had frozen, then press Play – and this time it did.

Nevertheless, the absolutely precise timing of the DVD's unexpected jamming with the screen going black due to the team's plummeting downward into total darkness was nothing if not unnerving!

 

My newly-purchased silver-hued statuette of Anubis, in traditional jackal representation (though recent research has unexpectedly revealed that Egypt's jackals are not jackals at all, but actually a hitherto-unrecognised species of wolf, so Anubis is correctly described not as jackal-headed any longer, but as wolf-headed instead) (© Dr Karl Shuker)

The Pyramid certainly plays to its strengths in terms of fostering an ever-increasing, intensifying, virtually tangible atmosphere of claustrophobic horror, ratcheting up the tension to an almost unbearable level, especially once the truly terrifying to behold and inordinately toothy Anubis appears and makes clear his deadly intentions for the few survivors left. Speaking of whom: don't expect a happy ending, at least not for them. As for Anubis – you'll have to watch the movie and find out for yourself what happens to him…

Finally: is it just me or is the publicity photo-still shown below of Anubis confronting terrified archaeologist Nora in The Pyramid more than a little reminiscent of the iconic much-reproduced publicity photo-still of the Alien confronting Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley in the 1979 space movie Alien? Just coincidence, or an intentional tribute by the former film to the latter one? Compare and contrast them, and decide for yourself.

If you'd like to watch an official trailer for The Pyramid on YouTube, please click here.

And to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE; please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

(Above) Anubis confronting a terrified Nora Holden in The Pyramid; (Below) The Alien confronting a terrified Ellen Ripley in Alien (© Grégory Levasseur/Silvatar Media/Fox International Productions/Atmosphere Pictures/20^th Century Fox – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only / © Ridley Scott/Brandywine Productions/20^th Century Fox – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)