Totally Done In By Ghosts, Found Footage And a Shaky Camera

In John Erick Dowdle’s “As Above, So Below,” the shaky camera style that started with the “Blair Witch Project” reaches its irritating apotheosis, and boy, do I wish we could de-potheosis this thing.

Indiana Jones, I mean Scarlett (Perdita Weeks), is continuing her late father’s quest for the Flamel Stone, a variation on the Philosopher’s Stone that turns stuff into gold and is the key to everything.

She finds the key clue with the help of ex-boyfriend George (Ben Feldman), and the bottom line is they have to assemble a group of spelunking weirdos to go burrow around in the catacombs under Paris.

(George gets shoved down a deep well face-first for his trouble, which is why you should never, ever, go on a quest with an ex. It’s simply asking for trouble.)

Along the way they encounter The Mole, collapsing tunnels, treasure and the Knights Templar, who are critical to this type of flick.

Also: ghosts, magic mirrors, healing the dead, and people with names like Zed, Siouxsie, Papillon, and Benji. Especially Benji.

Now, if this silly saga were told in a conventional style — you know, with camera operators and sets and stuff — it would be just another “Last Crusade of the Raiders of the Lost Tomb of Leonardo DaVinci” movie, the sort of thing that keeps people occupied until the next season of “Ancient Aliens.”

But the “found footage” shtick is so annoying it overshadows the handful of legitimately spooky setups, making them mildly startling, not shocking — like being prodded in the backside by a young cousin armed with a sharp stick, as happened to me this summer.

The shaky camera Dowdling — sorry, dawdling — also gives the viewer enough time to un-suspend the ol’ willing suspension of disbelief and start wondering why, if they have the dang Philosopher’s Stone, they don’t just rub it four times, say “Abracadabra” and make the bad things go away.

(Because then the movie would be 29 minutes long, that’s why.)

It’s too bad, because anything that involves confined spaces is scary. Submarine movies never, ever lose money, for instance.

Unless they are filmed in shaky-cam.

Automatic one-star deduction for no nekkidity. Another half-star off for stupid character names, and for the cata-combers all looking like vendors at an authentic artisanal heritage craft fair. I get enough of that “Brooklyn Ladle Company” malarkey in real life. 

And we’ll dock this turkey another full star for the shaky-cam. Enough, already.

So that leaves one and a half stars, out of four, which is still generous.

If you want to see “As Above, So Below” on the big screen you better hurry. I get the distinct impression that the film was destined for The Dreck Channel and only got into theaters because something went wrong with “Green Inferno,” the stupid-people-go-to-the- jungle-and-meet-cannibals flick that was supposed to open this week.

Note: I am instituting a star rating system this week, and I only chose stars because I don’t think my idea — coils of sausage that suggest something disgusting — would make it past the editor.

“As Above, So Below” is rated R for violence, terror, language. It is playing locally.