The biggest talking point of Frightfest 2010, at least on the weekend itself, was the withdrawing of A Serbian Film and what its replacement would be. Revealed officially right before the start of the film, we got Rodrigo Cortes’ 90 minute exercise in tension, Buried.While on my way to London, rumours and quickly after confirmation surfaced that the BBFC baiting A Serbian Film had been pulled from FrightFest after Westminster Council ruled that the film would HAVE to have a BBFC approved cut, something that would have involved the removal of more than 3 minutes from the runtime. What was not clear straight away though was what would replace it. Rumours were abound all weekend but one of the films that we had heard from many people was the Ryan Reynolds film Buried, something I was personally more excited to see than A Serbian Film. The organisers kept it quiet until literally 2 minutes before the film started and thankfully the rumours were true.
Truck driver Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) wakes to find himself in a coffin and buried alive. In the coffin he has a mobile phone and some various things to light his surroundings. He soon finds out that he is being held hostage and if his captors do not recieve a large amount of money within a few hours, he will suffocate and die there. Paul uses the phone to try and get help from people from his employers (including Stephen Tobolowsky), his wife Linda (Samantha Mathis) and US government man Dan Brenner (Robert Paterson) but time quickly starts running out.
Frightfest head man Alan Jones told us before the start of the film that if you are claustrophobic, you are going to have problems with this film and while that sounds very obvious, its well worth saying. Not one second of this film is spent outside of the coffin and this is both a technical marvel and also a show that the film’s plotting is absolutely engaging enough to sustain this. The film throttles you by the neck from the very first shot as Paul slowly wakes up and realises the seriousness of the situation he finds himself in. The first 5 minutes essentially consist of confusion and then full bodied horror and its a fucking terrifying way to begin a film. Of course, 90 minutes of panicing would not make a great film and so Paul soon gets himself together and with the simple device of a phone, we soon see the emergence of a few narrative threads, something quite incredible considering the single setting. As well as trying to get out of the coffin, he is issued further threats by the terrorists in which he is asked to make hostage videos, which the government people Paul speaks to are not happy with. This tussle between not giving into threats but the emnergence of more threats to Paul is simple but immensely effective in adding further dramatic tension, something that arguably is not needed given the premise but welcome nonetheless. When his employers come into the mix as well, we are also treated to darkly comic, but grounded and surprisingly disturbing portrayals of the way people will try and shift responsibility onto anyone else, from a moral and also financial standpoint. All this threads link together seamlessly and create a film that has more to say than just “a man’s stuck in a coffin”.
All of this would come to nothing though if you didn’t have a remarkable lead performance but you have it here. While you do hear several other people trough the runtime, the film visually is all on Ryan Reynolds and he knocks this out of the park. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for him to shoot this but the end result is that he completely becomes this character. Going through various degrees throughout, anger, resentment, even sarcasm he is wholly likeable, fully relatable and by the time the almost unbearably tense climax plays out, you are so emotionally invested in him that you will want to shout at the screen I guarantee it. It’s an amazing lead performance from an actor who for me is only getting better.
What I think stops this film from becoming a whole success though is the question of a rewatchability factor. It is gripping from start to finish but though there is more under the hood than expected, I could not see me going back to it again. I think this may be because of the visual look necessary for this film to do what it aims. We are stuck in the coffin throughout and because of that, once you know what the ending of the film is, it becomes less engaging as a result and while Rodrigo Cortes does try to do things that break you out of the claustrophobic nature of the film (including one bizarre long shot that seems to take place in Paul’s minds eye), if you were to go back again I just don’t feel that there is enough on screen to continually grab you on a 2nd viewing.
Buried is the perfect one watch film. For its runtime, you will be glued to your seat thanks to a surprisingly complex plot, moments of genuine emotion, surprising humour and a terrific central performance from Ryan Reynolds. When all is said and done though, I think the spell of the film may well be broken on rewatches and while I can’t say that definitively, unlike a lot of the films that played this past weekend, I can confidently say I don’t need to see it again.
8/10
