Buried

I got called up to go see this with a couple of friends I went to school with a few nights ago. I never check reviews before I see a movie. I like a surprise and determining how good or bad something is for myself because I always get a mixed response from people with every movie; some people saying a movie is worth seeing and others saying the opposite.

I paid $12 at my local Event Cinema - students rate.

I'll keep this as spoiler free as I can.

Throughout the movie I was in amazement at what was going on, keeping on the edge of my seat the whole time wonder how a film could be so horribly boring. I knew there wouldn't be much to expect from seeing an American stuck in a box underground but this was boring on a whole new level. When I enter a movie session and see around only 5 other people sitting down after entering a little late you know what to expect. It may not be all bad. If you have a strange fetish for seeing a man surrounded by wood, staring blankly at a Blackberry (wonderfully advertised I might add), breathing sounds, flickering lights but mostly darkness or sand then this film and you could just be a match made in heaven.

Finding it uninteresting could be due to myself not being an from the USA, not really caring about whatever it is they are trying to do in Iraq. The only two moments in the film where I felt briefly entertained was when Paul Conroy, our protagonist, nap a short nap and then woke to find a snake in his trousers and the other was his reaction to one of the calls to what I believe might have been a friend of his wife.

I felt constantly frustrated with the outcomes of all of Paul's behaviour. This might have been due to the sensation I was trapped in the cinema with him. Every person he had dealings with over the phone trying to negotiate a way out of this box was an arsehole. There was no way around this, it was annoying to tolerate.

Now to the topic of lighting. This cinema always turns off the lights while a movie is playing. Most of the film was complete darkness. After your eyes become adjusted to the dark the problem always dawned on me of being hit in the eyes by a white screen after Paul has turned on a torch or pulled out a lighter. I had to look away from the screen at some points as a result of how unpleasant this was.

There wasn't much to the story. I could summarise it with "Help, insurgents threw me in a box". Just to make it hit home rather hard with the yanks they threw in some social context issues like "DERP DEE DOOP IRAQ IS BAD". I have already seen Green Zone, this movie frankly came too late to attempt to make this point.

The ending was somewhat unsurprising and rather typical of the crap I had to sit through during 2007 and 2008. Can't remember what happened in those years? A lot of films came out with bad endings that made you feel like you had wasted your money. 30 Days of Night, 1408 (bad ending version), I am Legend; the list goes on. You get another punch in the face for watching the movie with the most inappropriate music to be bundled with the movie running during the end credits. I shouted out "That was awful", picked up my things and left. The rest of the group agreed with my opinion. Some people might cry and I know I would... for the $12 I just wasted away. A different ending might have been able to pick up opinion but the terrible ending really sealed the deal on a terrible movie.

On my way out of the cinema I saw the cashier who sold me my ticket. He understood what I had just gone through and said "I probably should have warned you" and suggested I watch Resident Evil next time.

On a scale with no integer values I give it a "not worth watching".