Rating: D+
Dir: Robert Conway
Star: Brittany Mae, Nathaniel Burns, Dan Higgins, Dan Weisgerber
I reviewed local film-maker Conway’s earlier film, Eminence Hill, before. Unfortunately, on the basis of this, there hasn’t been much progress as a film-maker over the six years since. Indeed, going purely by rating, Buried Alive is a bit of a step backwards. The problems begin early, with about four different stories competing for superiority: a rich jackass; criminals intending to rob said jackass; different criminals about to engage in a drug deal; and local police officer Charlotte Briggs (Mae). Oh, and all these threads come on the heels of a significant extract from Duck and Cover, the fifties Public Service Announcement about using your school-desk to survive a nuclear war. Hey, it’s public domain footage.
Eventually – and it takes longer than it should – we get to the “buried” part of the plot. Bad guys take refuge in a mine, hotly pursued by Charlotte and other law enforcement officials. After a poorly-considered explosion, the exit is blocked, so the only way out for everyone is through, with an uneasy truce being established. Turns out this is not just a mine, but the top of a late Cold War military installation, whose computerized supervisor, The Overseer (Weisgerber) is still functioning. It regards the new arrivals as hostile, and to be dealt with accordingly. There are also underground monsters: while I admire the attempt to channel the spirit of The Descent (albeit hairier), this doesn’t stand up well to any such comparison.
In fact, this doesn’t stand up well, full stop. The performances aren’t particularly the problem, it’s mostly a script which singularly fails to be interesting, with too much chat (Eminence Hill had a similar problem). The one idea it has which I did like, was Charlotte stumbling into a long-buried soldier, like one of those post-WW2 Japanese guys, hiding out in the jungle. Private Jim Stanley (Burns), a military computer programmer, could potentially have been an fun way to contrast the eighties and the present day. However, that would have required the script bothering to do anything of significance with that, beyond a snarky Bill Cosby reference. Pvt. Stanley is remarkably chill after four decades or so underground, with nothing but his Cosby poster for amusement (top).
The real problem is, it’s all just not very engaging. I tried: god knows, I tried. My first attempt at viewing this, I realized half way in my attention had a hundred percent gone elsewhere. So, doing my due critical diligence, I rewound the movie back to the part where everyone entered the mine, and tried again. Things did not improve. Indeed, this time, I flat out fell asleep, and this was at four o’clock in the afternoon. I guess I am just not interested in watching people slowly wander around a supposedly underground facility, bicker intermittently, while fending off an irritated AI and monsters which are obviously just people in masks. Fairly decent masks, I must admit: and that’s the best I can say about this.