Buried Movie Review

I was pretty excited to see Buried because, like many of you, I feel that being placed in a box and forgotten seems like a pretty scary thing. The movie didn't exactly disappoint, but it wasn't a horror. I was hoping for more scary. However, it was well done and effectively portrayed the notion that being buried alive can really suck.

The main, and mostly only, star of this flick is Ryan Reynolds, and he does a pretty good job at the role. He plays a truck driver in Iraq, whose convoy gets ambushed by some militia group while making a delivery. It's never real clear what happened to the other drivers, but we get the gist that it wasn't good.

He is placed in a makeshift coffin and buried with a cell-phone, a pencil, a flashlight, a pocket-knife, a movie camera and a couple shake-up green light things. Oh, and the Zippo lighter, which I thought was pretty cruel. You know, the whole 'flame eats oxygen' bit. Not a cool scenario.

He eventually finds out that he's been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. His only contact to the outside world is that cell-phone and so he uses it the best he can, while trying to maintain its battery life. He makes a couple ransom videos, against the hostage negotiator's advice, which don't help him a bit anyhow.

The kidnappers at first demand $5-million dollars, but then lower the price to only $1-million, which seems a bit more doable. Not really. So, needless to say, our man never gets the money. Not the best for his situation but, as we find out, it really may not have mattered anyway. Like I always say, I don't write reviews in order to spoil the whole thing, and so I won't go into much more detail about the happenings.

The movie was pretty well executed, and it was a nifty idea (and probably rather cheap) to make him the only filmed character. The only other person we actually see in the film is a woman on his cell phone. And no, it isn't like that. She's in trouble, not stripping for her boyfriend. Pervert.

Overall I'd give the movie three of five stars. Mostly because it didn't suck. I think they probably could have done a lot more with it but then again, I'm looking at things from the 'horror movie' perspective. A zombie woulda been real cool. Or a chainsaw murderer. Just saying.

More: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1462758/