Over the break, I had a few days of down time.

That’s fine with me; I’ll cuddle up with my puppy and fuzzy socks to watch Netflix until my eyes rot out of my head.

On one particular night, I decided to venture out in the below-freezing temperatures to grab a RedBox movie from Wal-Mart.

I picked the movie “As Above, So Below” [this column might contain some spoilers, so be ready]. I watched it come out in theaters and wanted to see it, but I ran out of time before it left. I eagerly popped it in.

This movie has a really slow start, really intense middle and a pretty lame ending.

But just the idea of being trapped underneath the earth with the demon-possessed body of an old friend who got trapped in the tunnels years before can shake someone’s mindset.

It’s a jumpy movie; I sat clutching my pillow tightly the majority of the time.

The premise of the movie lies on the quest for the Philosopher’s Stone. One of the characters’ fathers had spent his whole life looking for the stone and eventually committed suicide because it drove him mad that he could not obtain it.

After entering a tunnel that said, “The Gates of Hell,” the characters were faced with their largest regrets in life.

One character was dragged into a burning car by a young man screaming, “It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault!”

One could only assume that an accident had happened and now it was his turn to pay. Each character was slowly killed off in an accident that made them face their “sin.”

Eventually, the remaining characters realized what was going on and got their feelings in order to beat the devil.

How am I going to tie this into anything relevant, you ask?

Despite the creepiness of the movie, I rather enjoyed the themes that it provided. It made me reevaluate my feelings for the upcoming semester.

Towards the end of the break, I had been feeling like I was crawling on my belly to the Gates of Hell.

I don’t want the responsibility again; last semester, I felt like I had too much on my plate. I felt like I was setting up a lot of people for disappointment when I looked at my class and work schedule.

How am I going to balance all of this and raise my GPA at the same time?

The movie ends on the theme of forgiveness and trust.

Each character silenced their personal anxieties by forgiving themselves and trusting that once they did, the devil would release them back to the world.

It reminded me that I needed to forget the hardships and embarrassments of the past semester and look forward to making amends this semester and in future semesters.

Maybe that’s a dramatic comparison, but “As Above, So Below” helped me realize how much of a clean slate each new semester brings.