FILM · 2014 · FRANCE
As Above, So Below
31 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
31 Interesting Facts About As Above, So Below
Interesting Facts (19)
- #001
The cave inscribed "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" isn't really the Gate of Hell, as some assume. The real gate is the hidden entrance Papillon's group uses to get into the Catacombs. Soon after they enter, Papillon has them climb up through the bones; as they do, the tunnel collapses behind them and they find themselves back in the room they just left. Their only choice is to listen to La Taupe, who says the only way out is down. In Dante's Inferno, once Dante enters Hell he can't leave the way he came in; he has to keep going down to the bottom, where the only exit is, exactly as happens to the group.
- #002
When the group enters the first tunnel, they meet La Taupe ("The Mole"), who is thought to have died two years earlier, and he is in fact dead and trapped in Limbo. That's shown by his inhuman speed in the tunnels, and when the group later goes underwater and comes out soaked, La Taupe is completely dry. In Dante's Inferno, the First Circle of Hell is Limbo, where souls go who did no evil but didn't do enough good to reach Heaven.
- #003
The man Papillon left to die in the burning car turns up on the ninth level. In Dante's Inferno, the Ninth Circle is Treachery, and by claiming he had no part in the man's death, Papillon betrays both the man and himself. Strangely, Papillon is punished exactly as Virgil describes for the Eighth Circle, Fraud: "Each had his mouth protruding outward / The offender's feet and legs up to the calf remained inside."
- #004
When Scarlett realizes she has the wrong stone, she goes back for the right one, then sets off to save George, and on the seventh level she sees her father's body hanging. In Dante's Inferno, the Seventh Circle is Violence, divided into violence against others, against oneself and against God; violence against oneself is the Forest of the Suicides, where all suicides end up after death.
- #005
Near the end, Scarlett, George and Zed come to a huge pit and Scarlett says they have to jump. Before they do, they confess their sins, and they're miraculously saved from the fall. In Dante's Inferno, the only way for a sinner to escape Hell is to acknowledge their sins and truly atone; the group does just that and literally takes a leap of faith to get out.
- #006
The crew lowered a piano, and later the car they set on fire, into the tunnels beneath Paris. The piano was a nod to the one director John Erick Dowdle and his brother and co-writer Drew Dowdle used to jump off as kids. The crew wanted to build a hollow piano, but the Dowdles insisted on a real one, so they found a piano mover to get it into the catacombs and back out again. In the film, George says he and his brother used to jump off a piano just like it when they were little.
- #007
When the group descends to the second level, they first pass through a corridor where the sound is muffled, and soon afterward it suddenly swells until it hurts their ears, like a hurricane or whirlwind. In Dante's Inferno, Dante descends to Lust, the Second Circle, where a whirlwind spins souls around forever with a deafening roar worse than a storm at sea.
- #008
Benji's backstory is never given, but his death hints at it. While he waits to go down the rope, he's on the eighth level, Dante's Eighth Circle, Fraud. He's pushed down the hole by a woman holding a baby, and on reaching the ninth level, the Ninth Circle, Treachery, he's killed instantly. Having betrayed or cheated on a wife or girlfriend who had his child would explain how he died.
- #009
On the ninth level, the group meets a man in a black robe sitting on a throne. In Dante's Inferno, Treachery, the Ninth Circle, holds Satan himself, and given how closely As Above, So Below follows Dante, the robed man may well be the Devil.
- #010
When the characters enter the catacombs' hidden tunnel, they find a shrine room lit by red candles with several naked women, along with an apparition of the former partner Benji repeatedly cheated on, the mother of his child. This area guarding the gates corresponds to the entrance of Hell that Virgil describes to Dante, where the anguished cries of the damned are heard and two kinds of souls dwell: 1. the Opportunists and 2. the Outcasts. In terms of the Divine Comedy, the robed cultists are the opportunists and the naked ones the outcasts.
- #011
The three explorers Benji fitted with helmet "pin cams" before entering the catacombs are the three who make it out alive: Scarlett, George and Zed.
- #012
John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle talked to many cataphiles and asked about the strangest things they'd seen in the Paris Catacombs. They learned that because of the acoustics, choirs and musicians from all over the world go down there to sing and play in secret, so they decided to put a choir in the film.
- #013
In Hell's vestibule, Dante Alighieri meets a figure thought to be Pope Celestine V; in the same spirit, the film shows a Roman inscription linked to the Vatican bearing that notorious pope's name along the opportunists' narrow false path, and a man's screams evoke the torment of such a figure.
- #014
The film tracks Dante Alighieri's Inferno closely: the characters, like Dante, enter Hell, pass through its Nine Circles, see sinners punished according to their sins and escape through a gate where gravity is reversed, and at times the group's lines echo those of Dante's guide, Virgil.
- #015
Some scenes surprised the actors, such as the all-female choir singing half-naked in the catacombs, inspired by the witches' sabbath in the forest in Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (1966).
- #016
Dante's Hell has nine circles: Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud and Treachery, and As Above, So Below likewise has nine levels. La Taupe roams the darkness forever on the first level, Limbo. The second, Lust, has the deafening whirlwind Dante describes. On the fourth, Greed, there's treasure that can't be taken. On the seventh, Violence, Souxie is brutally killed and Scarlett finds her father hanged. Benji dies on the eighth, Fraud, and the ninth, Treachery, holds Satan on his throne.
- #017
The "Pap" graffiti Papillon ("Butterfly") says he left in the catacombs is still there and shows up in YouTube videos by people touring the catacombs years later, such as a 2020 video on the channel "TFIL - Visiting Every Country in Alphabetical Order."
- #018
The girl who pushes Benji down between the 8th and 9th levels looks like the girl he saw at the club, who stared at him while singing with the cult.
- #019
A real car was brought into the catacombs and set on fire with an actor inside, using ventilation systems and pyrotechnics; in a 2014 HitFix interview, director John Erick Dowdle said he tried it on himself first to make sure no one would get hurt, and was impressed with the effect.
Behind the Scenes (3)
- #020
As Above, So Below was the first production allowed by the French government to film in both public and off-limits areas of the Paris Catacombs, with the permit coming through the night before shooting began. The air and water were tested beforehand to make sure the cast and crew wouldn't be wading through battery acid. The only way into one of the main locations was through a hospital parking lot. Very few props were used: the film makes use of narrow, winding tunnels lined with real human bones arranged in eerie displays centuries ago. There was no electricity, toilet or cell signal underground; at times the cast and crew were waist-deep in water, some days they crawled on all fours for an hour, and some scenes were lit by the actors' own headlamps. Director John Erick Dowdle said the actors shot about 90 percent of the film themselves.
- #021
Director John Erick Dowdle said that before filming, cast and crew were asked whether they were claustrophobic and then put through an underground "closet test" to make sure. One actor was so uncomfortable that he decided to make his character claustrophobic; Dowdle didn't name him, but said the film's most claustrophobic scene suited Benji, played by Edwin Hodge.
- #022
The club where Scarlett looks for Papillon was a real one, Le Showcase, under the Pont Alexandre III in Paris, and DJ Axiom really was playing a set while the scene was shot. Le Showcase closed in February 2017 when its lease on the bridge's right pier ended, and the club was renamed "Bridge" in 2018.
Characters & Cast (2)
- #023
The film was shot in Paris over two months in summer 2013; director John Erick Dowdle said that after hours in the catacombs, the cast and crew became "mole people" who couldn't stand the sunlight when they came up.
- #024
The film went from pitch to director's cut in seven months. John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle had always wanted to make a documentary-style film or an Indiana Jones-type adventure with a female lead. When Legendary Pictures president Thomas Tull called to say he really wanted to do something in the Paris catacombs, the brothers said it would be perfect if the characters were hunting for something down there: Nicolas Flamel's Philosopher's Stone, which draws heroine Scarlett Marlowe into the catacombs. The Dowdles started developing ideas in 2008, Scarlett took shape in 2010 and filming began in 2013.
Deeper Meaning (6)
- #025
La Taupe kills Souxie in a room on the seventh level. It looks like an unprovoked attack, but Dante's Seventh Circle is Violence, and when the group finds La Taupe he tells Souxie she shouldn't be there and that no one is looking for her. Her death is implied to be tied to the sin of leaving La Taupe alone in the catacombs, which led to his death.
- #026
The room holding the Philosopher's Stone also has lots of treasure locked behind bars, and when Papillon and the others try to free it they trigger a booby trap and can't get it out. This is the fourth level down; in Dante's Inferno, the Fourth Circle is Greed.
- #027
Lucifer appears in the film as the only robed figure with his face uncovered, smoking in the pitch dark. His face resembles an angelic baby's, with the right side deformed like that of someone who has fallen. The look represents his fall from grace into what became Hell for him: the deformed right side shows he takes no pleasure in goodness, while the baby face recalls his former beauty as God's loveliest angel.
- #028
The water between the nine levels stands for the rivers of Hell that Charon ferries Dante and Virgil across. La Taupe plays Charon, Scarlett plays Virgil and George plays Dante: La Taupe guides the others across with deceit and puzzling reluctance, Scarlett leads them through Hell with her narration, and George broke a promise to someone he loved, leading to that person's death and cutting him off from love, including with Scarlett.
- #029
As Scarlett and George talk in the clock tower about their trip to Iran to find the Rose Key, the bell and clockwork start moving on their own, perhaps foreshadowing George's fate: like Dante, his life is pushed off course against his will and he must pass through Hell himself. Note also the run-in with a police officer near the catacomb entrance, which may stand for the she-wolf in the Inferno; though George insists they shouldn't go, he's forced into the catacombs.
- #030
As George, Scarlett, Papillon and Zed cross the water on the ninth level, George sees his brother Danny calling to him from underwater. George then admits that his brother drowned while he went for help, in words that could mean he feels he betrayed Danny by not saving him, or that Danny felt betrayed when George never came back. In Dante's Hell, the Ninth Circle is Treachery.
Life & Family (1)
- #031
The whole group goes to Hell because of sins they refuse to face. Scarlett's father called her before killing himself and she ignored it; George left his trapped brother Danny to get help, and Danny drowned; Papillon set a car on fire with a man inside; Zed fathered a child and rejected it. Benji's and Souxie's pasts are unknown, but Benji may have hurt his girlfriend and child, and Souxie may have committed violence against someone, possibly La Taupe, since she directly contributed to his death. Papillon, Benji and Souxie are punished accordingly, while Scarlett, George and Zed are forgiven because they admit their sins, repent and take a leap of faith.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- IMDb
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