Being buried alive is such a universally feared phenomenon that its no surprise cinema history – not just within the horror genre – is rife with terrifying sequences depicting just that. The most memorable moments of KILL BILL VOLUME 2, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, the proper version of THE VANISHING and even TV’s original C.S.I. all feature a character in such a scenario. BURIED takes the scenario and lavishes upon it the kind of confidence trick Hitchcock would have loved when in his experimental ROPE / LIFEBOAT / REAR WINDOW mode ; it’s no coincidence that the opening title sequence is modeled after the great Saul Bass.
BURIED is a movie in which the audience gets to experience first hand the experience of a single character as he is gradually runs out of hope, time and breath in the coffin where he finds himself at the very beginning. An astonishingly cynical and sweat-inducing intense suspense thriller, it makes sure we are never quite sure where it’s all heading and that we are utterly devastated when we realize exactly what’s in store for a protagonist we are siding with every step of the way.
Ryan Reynolds gives an award-caliber performance that redefines his entire career. He’s a Michigan-based, Iraq-working truck driver who survives a devastating ambush but wakes up in a coffin, buried around 2 feet under the ground. The only other characters we encounter in the course of BURIED are voices on the phone who seem to help and hinder his efforts to escape in equal measure. He has been buried with a lighter and a foreign cell phone with both limited signal and battery. Reynolds fights an increasingly desperate battle to find a way out via a variety of unhelpful officials, apparent responsible parties demanding $5million and an employer keen to shed any responsibility for the predicament he has been placed in. All the while he struggles to get hold of his wife back home.
Reynolds has been underrated in the past, perhaps because of his association with lowest common denominator entertainment, but here delivers a tour de force in a movie that absolutely demands a tour de force. Running the gamut from angry victim, determined survivor through to a man resigned to his own fate recording a (desperately moving) last will and testament to his wife via camera phone (shades of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT’s key moment), Reynolds is extraordinarily credible. He earns our sympathy and empathy right off the bat, we feel his anguish, laugh nervously at his gallows humor and share his frustrations when nothing seems to go right.
Superbly shot and edited to extract the maximum sustained suspense out of the restricted setting, BURIED has a remarkable momentum, delivering breathtaking individual sequences, including an encounter with a rattlesnake that nearly results in near-immolation. Reynolds’ phone conversations range from nerve-wracking to poignant, music is used superbly and there is a remarkable lack of lulls.
Cortes has taken something that could have just been an exceptional short and turned it into the kind of devastatingly effective thriller rarely seen these days. Its greatest triumph, other than being a relentlessly gripping thriller, is in being utterly uncompromised : the script cruelly gives the audience as much false hope as the central character maintains, before bowing out on the most haunting of notes via one final kick in the teeth. For our angry, cynical times, the movie is also rightfully angry and cynical at the typical treatment of typical citizens by the very government they work and fight for. This is a movie with the kind of attitude and ending that could only have been made outside the Hollywood system : here is a story with only one possible outcome about a man effectively left to die by the country he turns to when he needs help, with Reynolds reflective of all men and women from all walks of life placed in a war-zone.
– Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
