Buried [Review]

Well, there's only so much you can say about this film focusing for an hour and a half on a man in a box. No wait, what am I talking about? There's everything you can say! This previous conception of the feature may have put a lot of people off, but the amount of tension, focus and detail Buried has makes it a fantastic thriller. Along with this, the acting from Reynolds is spot on bringing all the elements to a very high standard.

Minimalist is the first word that comes to mind, but actually, the impact this film has makes the pleasure of viewing it so opposite to the word that you find yourself breathless (excuse the pun). Yes, the film is confined to a wooden coffin, a lighter, torch and mobile phone, but these apparatuses make for some damn exciting action.

I want to call this an action film, which is ridiculous because the most amount of action we see is him shuffling from one end of the box to the other. But this is exactly it; the way Rodriogo Cortes has gone about creating huge anxiety through little exertion makes it such an intriguing watch. We're taken through the film from phone call to phone call, feeling every moment of stress and frustration. You're wrapped up in this world trying to decipher why he's in the box, who's put him there, what's going to happen next. All these questions start building and building right from the get go, meaning we have no other choice than to sit on the edge of our seats, waiting for a long awaited answer. It's this waiting that holds the film together. But it's not drawn out in the slightest - Everything that's been put into this movie is a necessity.

Saying that, to film this must have been quite a challenge. The amount of takes, scenes reshot and editing to bring this up to scratch with a mainstream audience's tastes makes it somewhat of a masterpiece for filmmaking. You're given the confines of a rectangular shape yet making such lasting impression on the audience. The use of music, lighting, close up shots, interesting pans and raw definite elements makes this a treat for the eyes... Besides the whole pain element, but we'll block that out of our memories for now.

Speaking of pain, the amount of emotion that's gone into the creation of this claustrophobic movie means we feel everything Paul (Ryan Reynolds) does. Who would have thought the player from  Two Guys, A Girl and A Pizza Place could have brought to the audience this desperate character in need of something to help him so painfully that you want to jump out of your seat and into the setting to save him?

What's also nice is that he's not glamourised. If you take him in, say, The Amityville Horror, there is clear fetishism of his body. But in this he's sweating, bleeding, crying and yelling truthfully as if he were actually buried. There's still a little part of me that believes he was and it was all a tormenting game the director played - That's how believable his performance is. But, I'm also not stupid and realise this is fiction (I hope...).

To call this exciting lets the film down. You need to go into the film expecting nothing and receiving everything (which is hard to do after that statement, I realise). You'll either truly be astonished or be completely baffled at the concept. I do hope it's the former, otherwise this review will have been wasted on you.

4 stars

"Buried" Trailer Analysis

When you watch this trailer the whole way through, it seems kind of ambiguous. On the one hand it seems exciting as you have no idea why he's in a coffin, what's going to happen to him and where the film is going to go. But on the other hand, it literally just does show him in a coffin leading you to think maybe this film hasn't got much going for it at all. But when you take a closer look at the way this trailer has been put together, it builds the film up just the right amount to make you intrigued enough to go and see it, without the feeling of being let down too much, as the action shown is minimal.

When the trailer first starts, it's a blank screen. Typical of this sort of genre as when you're watching black your mind begins to wonder. You're not taking in anything else other than the noise. And the noise here is an intense beat, forcing you to become anxious immediately, setting the tone of the genre. Then we hear the protagonist say "Okay, okay, okay" in a quick and frantic pace. This leads you to believe someone's in trouble, but we can't see anything so the tension begins to rise. We then hear a dialing tone and "911" after he states "pick up, pick up, pick up". You hear 911, you know there's danger.

After we discover the protagonist doesn't know where he is and that he got "hit on the head", you're now in frightened mode. Typically, you relate to the lead character. In a lot of cases, the audience know more than the characters giving them some sort of cathartic awareness leading them to feel a lot more at ease with the action, as they can imagine what's going to occur. But as the phone cuts out and the music intensifies, there's no cathartic awareness, there's just pure panic and mystery.

After 40 long seconds of no image, we see he has a lighter which illuminates the area briefly. After several attempts of the lighter lighting - A clever device on their part as the small flame will only show a small amount of space, providing an even more claustrophobic feeling that we already have, we see from a long shot his face laying down in an impacted environment which is wooden. You now know he's in a coffin. This alone is a fear in itself because nobody knows what happens once you die, so a coffin is a very enigmatic object causing your mind to go into overload at the idea of it. But that's all we get. After he releases a sigh of relief and almost pain, the screen fades out and ominous music begins to play as the title "Buried" slowly fades onto the screen.

So from the clues given, he's trapped in a coffin buried underground. We know nothing about what would happened or what could happen. We're not even sure of the lead actor as there are no titles introducing him, but you're probably aware that is it Ryan Reynolds. It's a brilliant trailer. You're scared enough to be moved by it, but also left wondering what you've just seen to want to go and see it.