Buried Alive Review

• 14th Oct 2011

Buried Alive, from director Frank Darabont, is the somewhat ludicrous tale of a cheating wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Joanna) poisoning and burying her doting husband, only for him to suddenly come-to in his rotting coffin and extract revenge on his wife and her lover. Unfortunately, the film falls far short of what we know Darabont is capable of (the excellent The Mist) as well as falling short of what most of us would deem ‘horror’.

The only thing scary in Buried Alive is the thought that Jennifer Jason Leigh has managed to forge a career in acting. She is even awful at deliberately-bad acting; Darabont should have given her the direction of aiming to act better than she has ever acted in her life, this may have produced something better than a four year old being caught poking things up their nose. Truly shoddy from her. William Atherton, on the other hand, is very convincing as the manipulative lover (the poisonous fish-wrangling doctor, Court); he is ever so good at playing a total twat (“Yes, it’s true…this man has no dick”). So much so, I found it hard to credit Joanna’s belief that he wasn’t going to turn round and furnish her with a home-made heart attack. Clint is a boring, supposedly warm hearted local boy, but he pretty much blends into the scenery. His brief back story, given to us by the tough sheriff-with-a-heart, the rather wonderful Hoyt Axton, is tired; very much the familiar bad boy turned good.

I am also pretty sure that the fish used to murder Clint aren’t poisonous at all – only wild puffer fish carry the toxins that can kill people and they don’t look like the pretty things swimming round the fish tank. In his not-so-dramatic finale of murderous revenge, the wondrous wooden maze that Clint is able to whip up in a matter of minutes is utterly silly, just like his choice of costume. The sequence that the film is based around, what should have been the pivotal scene, Clint waking up in the coffin buried alive, is wasted. It’s barely claustrophobic and he appears to be buried about three inches below the surface. Although Clint does seem fairly upset, it feels rushed.

It may sound like I am pulling holes in the film for no good reason, but the holes are there to be seen by all, which is good enough reason for me.

I realise I am finding it hard to find anything good to talk about, which I don’t like, purely because I do have a lot of love for Darabont. There are a few nifty bouts of humour that manage to raise a smirk, but these are too few, much like the scares. This was altogether a disappointment for me and even if your worst fear is being buried alive, I am pretty sure you could watch this with ease.

Hannah Turner