Buried Alive

October 24, 2007

Rated: NR Runtime: 94 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Buried Alive is the typical cheesy horror movie, where college kids get drunk, naked, run through the woods and get killed. Sounds perfect, right? Eh, not quite. It’s not that Buried Alive is a bad movie, it’s just not that good of a movie.

After an initial scene where we see Lester (Tobin Bell, that guy from Saw) digging for gold in a cellar, then a scene with Rene in a tub (no nudity), we’re introduced to Zane and Phil, with Zane being a rich-kid-but-only-if-he-graduates and Phil being the computer-nerd-who-helps-him-out. Seems Zane can’t keep it together long enough to get a degree and is looking to find the long lost treasure his great grandfather apparently had, and Phil is searching Google to help him find it. OK, so we now know that Zane is too stupid to use Google, that’s impressively stupid.

Rene is Zane’s kissing cousin (yeah, he wants her) and is also handling a couple of pledges for her sorority. In order to help scare the girls, Zane agrees to take them all up to his great grandfathers house in the desert.. this lets him dig for gold! Now, why he couldn’t just go up there anytime he wanted? Unexplained. In reality this is just an excuse to get a couple more babes on screen, and that’s all the excuse we need.

OK, Tobin Bell is the caretaker for this property, which turns out to be a hell of a nice house on 10,000 acres, and it doesn’t look that much like the desert to me with all the big trees lining the driveway.. but whatever. He’s a creepy dude who’s also looking for the gold.. and has been for years. Now, if you were looking for buried treasure and had had years to do it.. don’t you think the FIRST place you would have checked would be the cellar?! Man, the people in this movie are stupid.

When they arrive the first thing Lester tells them is to stay out of the cellar… so of course, the first place Zane goes is.. the cellar, where he discoversLesters digging. Ya know, all of this doesn’t really matter that much. Let’s skip ahead. Eventually they figure out that the place is haunted by great-granpa’s first wife, who was a Native American, and who really wants her necklace back.. one that Zane gave Rene (told you he wanted her.) Instead of going right for it she takes out a few of the kids first, for the heck of it I suppose.

This is all pretty standard fare for this type of movie, so what’s the problem? Well, couple things.. it’s a bit slow. There’s no “horror” until the last 30 min or so, with only a few chops before that. And more importantly, there’s virtually no nudity! Keep in mind this movie is marketed as “unrated” and states on the box “… packed with sex…” so obviously you’re expecting to see these sorority sisters get jiggly. Well, the blonde does show some boobage a couple of times, but other than a couple of butt shots, that’s it. For that matter, when the brunette has to run naked through the woods, she keeps her arm over her breasts and is actually wearing panties. Slow-mo and a line doubler reveals all folks. You’ve never heard of the actresses before, so how hard would it have been to find a couple who were willing to show it all?! Very disappointing.

The special effects aren’t so hot either, but that’s ok, I’ve grown tired of the constant one upping between horror franchises these days as they try to compete on who can show us more entrails. The old school effects employed in Buried Alive were quite refreshing.

So why did I give it 3 stars? The ghost is kinda creepy, and the simple methods they use to move her around the screen is quite effective. I’m not sure why a partially rotted old woman with an axe was creepy, but it was. In the end the movie was enjoyable if you’re in the mood for this sort of thing, just keep your expectations in line and you should have a good time.

Posted by John | Filed Under 3 Stars, DVD, Erin Lokitz, Horror, Leah Rachel, NR, Steve Sandvoss, Terence Jay, Tobin Bell, Unrated