HOLLYWOOD—I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Hollywoodis not a big fan of horror movies for the summer months. This summer proved that as horror was virtually non-existent in 2014, unless you count the August release of “As Above, So Below.” This haunted thriller follows a bunch of people who venture into the dark regions of the Catacombs in Paris, France.

What they soon encounter are supernatural forces that make it nearly impossible to escape their pasts. Watching the movie I had the eerie feeling of watching “The Descent.” There is no comparison between these two films. “The Descent” did an exceptional job at creating claustrophobic suspense; “As Above, So Below” attempts to create that same eerie feeling, but fails miserable.

For starters, the characters lack in full development. They are just thrown together by our heroine Scarlet (Perdita Weeks), who is a lover for all things historical and unexplained. She then rounds up a group of friends who are willingly giddy about exploring the dark corridors of the catacombs underneathParis, France. While searching for the truth they encounter strange hallucinations and creatures that pose a far larger threat than they imagined.

It later becomes apparent the visions they encounter is a link to their past. Our characters are forced to face a past sin that has literally thrown their mind into a whirlwind. It then becomes a quest of survival as one by one the characters are unable to convince their minds that a twisted trick is being played on them. I’ve seen far better thrillers capable of maintaining the viewer’s attention without delivering the same old horror clichés that we’ve seen time and time again.

There might be a reason that the horror genre has all but become extinct? Movies like “As Above, So Below” continuing to recycle things the audience has become all too wise to in the past 30 years. You don’t reinvent horror by delivering the same thing, you reinvent by delivering something that has yet to be seen.