Screenwriter-turned-director Grégory Levasseur serves up disappointingly scant shocks in this derivative tale of archaeologists trapped in an underground pyramid in conflict-torn Egypt. Having lost their remote-control robot camera to forces unknown, a father-daughter team and accompanying documentary crew (the found-footage motif is invoked and abandoned willy-nilly) venture into a series of labyrinthine tunnels, apparently awakening an ancient curse en route. Juggling low-rent Mummy-style set pieces with the confined-space panic of this year’s superior As Above, So Below, The Pyramid plods through its conventional generic tropes in increasingly aggravating fashion, any tension dissipating in the face of unscary cats and rubbery monsters. Inbetweeners star James Buckley is charged with injecting a note of laddish humour, but it’s not long before he begins to annoy those off screen as well as on. Compare this to the claustrophobic terrors of Neil Marshall’s tightly budgeted 2005 gem The Descent – a home-made horror film that really knew how to put the squeeze on its audience.
