20th Century Fox’s The Pyramid centers around a pyramid discovered by using high tech satellite technology. You might have to use that same satellite technology to find out anything about this movie because Fox certainly isn’t promoting it. Usually a lack of press screenings for a film indicates knowledge on the studio’s part that they’ve got a dud on their hands. The Pyramid isn’t outright terrible but it is hopelessly and hilariously confused.
The first 15 minutes of the movie manages to hit a bunch of low budget horror movie tropes and commit to none of them. There’s a thin found footage angle that has a documentary team following a father-daughter archaeologist team on their dig in the Egyptian desert. There’s also a rover with some cameras attached to it that used to get the obligatory voyeur shot of the movie’s young female star as well contribute to the found footage angle. Within minutes of establishing the documentary film crew we suddenly start getting shots that are obviously not from any camera and for the rest of the movie we switch back and forth from regular shots to shots from different character’s cameras without any rhyme or reason. There’s a even a section in the classic green tinged night vision style that gives away once danger has passed and suddenly the characters can see in the dark.
When the transition is made to inside the pyramid the movie becomes a monster movie with the characters trapped and looking for a way out while being picked off by strange creatures. The characters react to most events as stupidly as possible as their personalities shift depending on what the plot demands from them. The Pyramid is full of classic “Don’t do it!” moments and those moments can work if you provide if there’s a twist of if they’re executed but there’s none of that here. The “scares” are nothing but objects suddenly bursting into frame accompanied by loud noises. There’s a few moments of gore but the effects low quality and almost comically bad.
The Pyramid has a few interesting ideas floating around. The monster is an unique choice but is deployed poorly. None of the characters are remotely interesting and the scenarios they’re put in have been done before and executed much better. Thankfully the film is mercifully short, coming in at about 90 minutes. Then again, you could probably spend 20 minutes on Wikipedia reading about the different tombs found in Egypt and their supposed curses and it would be more entertaining than The Pyramid.
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