Buried

★★★★

(2010)

A contract truck driver wakes up in a wooden coffin underground somewhere in Iraq with just a lighter, a pen and a mobile phone. He soon finds out he’s being held captive for ransom and we, never leaving the coffin watch him desperately try to get out. There’s no way this could sustain excitement for 90 minutes is there?

Well… yes. Buried is an unbelievably tense concept thriller which somehow manages to sustain the intense claustrophobia through a number of great set pieces, a tight script, a surprising sense of humour and a solid unsettling and frantic performance from Ryan Reynolds.

Spanish director Rodrigo Cortes took only 2 weeks to shoot the film in a studio in Barcelona using elaborate camera tricks and a pin-sharp depth of field to keep us as close as possible to Reynolds. The film shows slight signs of veering off track towards the hour mark but a Bernard Herman like score by Victor Reyes and some brilliant phone calling twists make Buried feel effortless and unbelievably entertaining.