The Pyramid, a slasher film set in a previously undiscovered pharaoh’s tomb, is exclusively populated by whiny narcissists, like fame-hungry reporter Sunni (Christa Nicola) and stuffy know-it-all Holden (American Horror Story‘s Denis O’Hare), and their obnoxious companions, whiny cameraman Fitzie (James Buckley) and pouty researcher Nora (Ashley Hinshaw). These putrid meat-puppet protagonists are most bearable when they’re defined by circumstantial perils, like air poisoning, cannibal sphinx cats, and a hulking undead monster.
But while these boors are supposed to be obnoxious, their generically oblivious behavior and tin-ear dialogue makes them even more hatefully annoying than they should be. Whenever the meat puppets aren’t fighting for their lives, they’re either laboriously describing their surroundings — Holden deciphers hieroglyphs that explain Egyptian god Osiris “weighed [human] souls, and only pure hearts passed on to the afterlife” — or monotonously carrying on, like whenever Fitzie repeatedly begs his colleagues, “Can we please focus on getting the hell out of here?”
Worse still, the film’s nausea-inducing handheld photography makes it impossible to enjoy watching Holden’s loathsome group get dispatched by falling debris and sickly-looking monsters. The Pyramid should be nasty fun, but its creators aren’t creative enough to be effectively ghoulish.