Review of Buried (2010) by Dawdlingpoet — 22 Nov 2021

This is a very claustrophobic movie (as if that really needs to be said(!)), though it can make you jump as it starts off quite slowly and there are a couple of points when suddenly things start to happen and there's a panic - you don't really expect it and suddenly its alot more claustrophobic than it was before - with the lights turned off and the curtains drawn, its easy to be drawn into Pauls world, to feel his panic and I found myself also almost desperately darting my eyes around the screen to see if there was a way out for him, so in that way you do become rather drawn in to the whole situation. I could almost feel slightly out of breath myself and it certainly makes me greatful for being safe at home(!) and not in his position.

Its a basic concept but it does seem to work for the duration of the movie, its perhaps a little slow but then I think in this case, its a good thing as it makes the other, more gripping scenes alot more intense. Its quite gripping watching, although it isn't without its flaws, of which I feel there's a few, depending on how picky you are these may make or break the movies validity - 1) The fact that the Blackberry phone he was buried with a happens to have fairly decent signal the majority of the time (I have a Blackberry and reception is often a problem and I've never been buried under ground lol I hear its a big issue with almost all smartphones - they need a stronger signal than basic handsets to be able to work properly and especially to upload and download data). I noticed when data was transferred, it seemed to happen surprisingly quickly and although the battery life does go down, I just felt it was a bit unlikely that it would have worked as well as was portrayed, in 'real life'. I also thought it was a bit strange that the phone had islamic writing/characters displayed yet the buttons were marked in English (such as 'yes' and 'no' buttons etc.) - is this how it would be in life? I have no idea but I did wonder about that a little...

2) The cheesiness/possibly over-acting present - for women, you'll probably want to have some tissues to hand, as there are the almost staple for this kind of movie teary eyed phone calls to Paul's loved ones, the awkward final conversation to his mother who clearly has some sort of dementia or alzheimers and Paul recording a message where he makes an apology to his son - thats all I'll say but yes, its perhaps a bit overly, predictably cheesy in a way that may make male viewers roll their eyes - again it depends on how picky you are but these are my thoughts anyway.

As I said, its a pretty basic concept plotwise, being a case of one man and his phone and there are quite a few different people that Paul tries to communicate with, as it happens its pretty important to keep track of the names, although it does get a bit confusing, if your like me and find it difficult to remember many names (im better at recognising faces but not surprisingly there aren't many faces visible in this movie - there aren't even flashbacks in the movie).

The use of the lighting was quite good, that was pretty believable because of course its an issue, if you imagine someone being buried with no lighting, the screen would be blank pretty much the entire time and that would be no real cinematic experience, right? yet its not full of lighting where your left wondering where is this light coming from as he is buried feet below the surface - so, I think it was fairly believable how they handled that aspect, which is good. The camerawork is also pretty good, in those ways its, like other movies I've reviewed recently, quite similar to the Blair Witch project, the camerawork being realistically shaky and in one instance it fades out in a way to highlight Paul's state of mind at that time in the movie.

Yes, I'd recommend this movie as I felt it was quite gripping towards the end, I was quite absorbed by it and I found the story (basic as it was) quite intriguing, wanting to find out the final outcome, which will no doubt have divided opinions in terms of how satisfying or realistic or not it was. This isn't a movie for people who have issues with claustrophobia I think its pretty fair to say (which should be obvious but again, I may as well mention it anyway) and there are one or two scenes which make you want to look away and wonder if he's really going to do what it seems he will, so I don't think its advisable for very squeamish people to watch either but yes, its a pretty good movie otherwise I think.