By: Lewis Dyson

Director – Rodrigo Cortés

Starring – Ryan Reynolds

DVD Release – Out now

Certificate – 15

Gays.co.uk Rating

If you were to ask a group of people what is the most terrifying scenario you could ever find yourself in, a few usual suspects will repeat: stranded in the middle of the ocean (movie check – Adrift), being a passenger on a plane plummeting towards Earth (many a movie check) and being buried alive.

That last forms the basis for survival thriller Buried, out now on DVD and BluRay. These what would you do style films, when done right, can put you right in the moment, create real tension and be genuinely terrifying. Buried just about carries this off.

The film should be commended for its originality and bravery. It effectively asks you to watch a guy in a coffin for an hour-and-40 minutes. Ryan Reynolds – cast to add a whiff of credibility to subject matter that would be oh so easily drawn out and hackneyed) wakes up to find himself six-feet under in a wooden box with only a lighter and a mobile phone. It is gradually revealed that he is a truck driver named Paul Conroy who, while working in Iraq, had his convoy ambushed; was knocked unconscious and wound up in the dirt.

Conroy has to somehow find an escape before his limited oxygen supply runs out.

Although the camera never leaves the coffin, there are really two locations in the film, inside the box and Conroy’s life outside. The two worlds are linked through a mobile phone with rapidly depleting battery life.

The technique works surprisingly well as Conroy’s conversations with the FBI, a hostage handler, and his mysterious captors, paints a portrait of a frantic rescue mission without actually showing anything. The most interesting scenes involve him trying to calmly describe where he is despite the obviously panic-inducing surroundings. The whole civilian-hostage-in-Iraq angle adds an interesting political dimension. As his American rescuers try their best to cover their own backs rather than negotiate with the unidentified antagonists.

At the heart of the film is an intriguing concept and the filmmakers should be applauded for not being tempted to stray from the coffin. It is a claustrophobia-inducing experience and there are some parts that will have the heart pumping. The variety of lighting and disorientating camera angles are commendable given the limitations of the setting.

The casting of Ryan Reynolds might not have been the best choice: yes, he is a big name who has to carry the film on his own (which he does to an extent) but he cannot resist throwing in his patented smarmy sarcasm. Rather than provide light relief, this grates with the rest of the film.

Buried is definitely worth a watch, but besides being entertaining there is not much to really blow your minds and those renting or buying it on DVD will probably be relieved they did not fork out to watch this in the cinema. An interesting yet flawed exercise in filmmaking.