Directed by Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Cortés (The Contestant), Buried is set in an unexpected place: the inside of a coffin.
The concept behind the independent horror flick Buried is original, but the poor execution renders it an uninspired, wholly uninteresting movie.
The film opens with a dirt-covered and disheveled Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds, The Proposal) waking up to find himself in a coffin underground with no idea how he got there.
Conroy, a truck driver who is working in Iraq, has just suffered an attack on his convoy.
He soon discovers that his kidnappers were nice enough to supply him with a few basic items of survival — a cell phone, lighter, knife, two stick-lights, and a generous flask of whiskey.
As the only communication device, the cellphone proves to be Conroy’s most important tool. Conroy uses it to talk to everyone from his kidnapper to his would-be rescuers to his wife and senile mother (Tess Harper), as well as a very unpleasant lawyer (Steven Tobowlski).
The framework of the plot is built quite quickly. The kidnapper wants money, and the hostage worker (Robert Patterson) cares more about keeping the “situation” under wraps than about saving Paul, who spends his time cursing, crying and calling random people.
Dialogues on the cellphone comprise the bulk of the movie, and several characters, like Paul’s mother and lawyer, are never shown.
The kidnappers call every 10 minutes or so to tell Paul either to make a hostage video or do something else, making sure to space out their demands as well as to reveal gradually the twists over the length of the movie.
Every time Paul hangs up with one of them he calls the hostage rescuer and has a long expletive-filled conversation.
Alternatively, he calls his wife’s cellphone, which she’s forgotten in a car; tearful speeches to an answering machine abound.
Between the dialogues, there are several standard thriller set-pieces, some more effective than others.
In one, for example, a snake appears suddenly in the coffin with no explanation, forcing Paul to chase it away.
After a two-minute scene it leaves just as suddenly as it appeared and is never seen again.
A five-minute sequence of grunting (Reynolds grunts a lot in the movie) as Paul tries to turn over in the coffin is interesting, and really makes the viewer feel how uncomfortable the tight space is.
On the other hand, a slow zoom-out later in the movie clearly shows a coffin that’s at least six feet tall, probably more, and dwells on this embarrassing image for a while. It could have been considered a blooper were it not the foreground of the shot.
This is not the only amateur decision. Though Buried is supposed to be a thriller, there were quite a few chuckles in the audience at some of the more absurd moments.
A scene where Paul calls his mother in a nursing home is perhaps the worst in the movie.
Paul is in the middle of Iraq, trying to get himself rescued while being pressured by the kidnapper to dish out hostage videos (via his cellphone), but spends a good five minutes trying in vain to connect with his mother despite the fact that she’s demented to the point of being incomprehensible.
Another recurring problem with the movie is the script, which fails in its attempt at clever dialogue.
At one point, Paul’s would-be rescuer, in an effort to calm him down, warns him to “stop literally wasting your breath.” After that one-liner, the groans are inevitable.
Political jabs at American involvement in Iraq abound. It’s one thing for the kidnappers to deny being terrorists, but for the hostage worker to insist on this while talking to Paul is ridiculous.
It’s driven home time and again in Buried that these kidnappers are only doing it because the evil Americans invaded their lands and destroyed their lives.
“What would you do?”, the hostage worker asks Paul at one point.
The kidnappers themselves seem to be unrealistic in their complete lack of understanding of hostage-taking principles.
It is never explained, for instance why they buried their hostage underground, when it seemed like a simple tying up would suffice.
When told that the United States does not negotiate with terrorists, and that they won’t get their $5,000,000, they quickly reply “We’ll take less.”
At other points in the movie the kidnappers are shown (via video message on the cell-phone) to have killed another hostage just to intimidate Paul, and at one point demand of him — for no particular reason, other than the bad-guy code — to inflict a rather disgusting injury upon himself.
The audience is left with may questions. Why do they make him do it? Why does he listen? Why didn’t they try to ransom the other hostage? That’s beyond the scope of the film and the cares of the film-makers.
One thing must be said about Buried — it isn’t boring. If the need in a movie is a way to keep yourself awake for an hour and a half, it’ll do the job.
Given the limitations of the setting, that’s an impressive achievement, and as a student film this would be spectacular.
Still, so much effort was put into keeping the movie alive for 90 minutes that there was no time left to make it interesting.
Every five minutes a new charge from the defibrillator is needed to keep the interest going, and by the time the credits roll, the movie collapses, completely lifeless.
All that’s left to do is bury the remains of Buried.
