Buried

To some people ‘Buried’ might seem like a 90 minute commercial for Blackberry. Others might like to point out that exposing a naked flame in a coffin with diminishing levels of Oxygen is not the most sensible thing to do. But in order to make the basic premise of ‘Buried’ work the script had to require the audience to suspend their disbelief. Mainly because otherwise the entire film would have been in pitch darkness.

But if you accept and embrace these slightly fantastical elements then what you are left with is an extremely tense plot, a beautifully crafted and original piece of filmmaking and a remarkably strong lead performance. Ryan Reynolds is more familiar to people as Van Wilder or ‘the guy’ from The Proposal, but for those sixteen of us who actually saw The Nines, well, the kid can act. And here he is charged with carrying the film to an even greater extent that performances like Tom Hanks in Cast Away or Will Smith in I Am Legend. Suffice it to say that he nails the part, happily avoiding making the film either ludicrous or unengaging.

Spanish director Rodrigo Cortes, along with his mainly Spanish production team, has great fun playing with how you can shoot a movie that takes place entirely in a coffin. The whole thing is terribly cleverly put together, film making buffs will marvel and wonder at how exactly the film was made when the camera travels at seemingly impossible angles. It is this manipulation of the space that means that the film does not ever become boring, something that with more static cameras could easily have happened.

Despite slightly preposterous elements to the basic story, the film is a gripping, tense and extremely effective suspense thriller. Even though it takes place entirely in a box underground it is as global and exciting a film as you’ll see this year.