DVD review: Buried

A guy is buried alive.

Not for the faint of heart, the big gimmick of this movie is that this is a buried alive story entirely shot from within the coffin; we literally never see the light of day. This takes an already claustrophobic concept and amp it up to 11.

Shooting a movie in such a limited space obviously presents a lot of technical difficulties. The director, Rodrigo Cortes a name to watch, came prepared to the game and using an ingenious array of partial coffin managed what can only be called “the complete essay on the many different angled that you can shoot from in a coffin”. Not only is the movie clear, the craftiness of the director makes a very static subject entertaining to watch.

Ryan Reynolds plays the only character of the movie, an hapless American truck driver in Iraq who is left in the titular coffin with just some matches and a mobile phone. With this hard and physically demanding role Reynolds certainly demonstrates that he is more than the generic white American pretty face.

The plot is the only real weak point of the movie. While thematically coherent with the subject it literally goes nowhere. I understand that it’s not easy to write a movie like this but with a little bit more stuff going on the screen it would have been more watchable.

If you are the core audience for this kind of stuff rejoice because the buried part is perfect, if you are not I suggest you watch something else because, as I’ve said before, the buried part is perfect and you don’t really want to see it.