Buried Alive

Robert Kurtzman is a seasoned horror vet, no one can deny that. However he made a truly terrible film in this case. The new Dimension Extreme label has gotten off to a hot start with the excellent Black Sheep and Broken. In addition you have a good director and the always at the top of his game Tobin Bell in the cast. Who by the way the way does have a decent amount of screen time, as some have said it's just a cameo. Now if you look at my past reviews you can tell I'm a generous critic who makes an effort to highlight the strengths' of a film, but thats really a difficult task here. For one the film is quite boring. The cast is annoying with the exception of Tobin. They didn't make me laugh and they certainly didn't make me care about there fates'. Most of all Buried Alive goes a good thirty or forty minutes before anything scary or gory happens, and then you have another long wait to the end. Your just stuck with the lame interaction of the characters lounging about, really not doing much. Tobin Bell is the only bright spot here. Now a couple things barely save this from a one rating, and thats a few much welcome moments of nudity, and maybe two kills done much better in Wrong Turn 2. Still it's so awfully boring for so long that I was actually just looking at the back of the DVD case for the running time, to see how long my misery would last. As an easy to please critic I give Buried Alive a "very" generous 3 rating. Kurtzman's other new film The Rage actually looks quite good, so I'll forgive this effort.

I went out to the video store to get myself something to watch besides the boring drama films that keeps showing on TV all day long, and so I found buried alive, it wasn't boring just very uninteresting, the pace is extremely slow and I would sum up the storyline, but the whole sorority thing, the one guy on a treasure hunt and the ghost story thing makes it a little confusing, because judging from the cover you'd expect a horror film but its over shadowed by a very slow storyline consisting of very dull and stereotypical characters, although the cast isn't bad but they should'vie considered something other than this, and the gore effects are very forgettable and not as well done as in many of the good horror films

Overall, a good horror film is one that scares you so much you lie awake at night still thinking about it, a bad horror movie is one that bores you so much you fall asleep during the day and you won't even remember it the following day, so consider getting something like saw if want to see Tobin Bell at his best, or vacancy for mixture of 80's horror with a modern twist, because this won't satisfy horror fans very much.

3 out of 10

Zane (Terence Jay) and Renee (Leah Rachel) play incestuous cousins who get Renee's boyfriend Danny (Steve Sandvoss) nerd Phil and two fraternity pledges to a big old deserted house in the middle of the desert. It belongs to Zane and Renee's family and Zane thinks there's a treasure buried there. Also on hand is crazy old Lester (Tobin Bell of the "Saw" franchise). They're all attacked by an evil old spirit.

The story is old and characters familiar but that's not what sinks the film. It's basically boring! I kept dozing off cause there was nothing interesting on the screen! To make it worse the gratuitous female nudity here is REALLY gratuitous and annoying. On the up side there's some REALLY gruesome gore, the whole cast is attractive (especially hunky Sandvoss), the acting isn't half bad and it does manage to eke out some suspense at the end. Also Jay (or more likely a stand in) shows a nice butt. So it's not terrible but dull and awfully familiar.

Wow. Before I watched this movie, I read the reviews here on IMDb. Since I tend to like cheesy "B" horror, I figured I would still give it a shot.

I really regret it! This movie is low-budget, which in and of itself is not bad - however, combined with the horrible acting, lousy special effects and the absence of any SOLID storyline, it simply does not work. The ending is beyond stupid, and it wraps up the movie as if it were a TV show that ran out of time. The characters are waaaay too cookie-cutter. You have the "nerd", the "dumb blonde", etc etc. Come on guys. Put a little more effort into developing the characters so that we, as the audience can get involved in this story and watch on the edge of our seats. Lousy, lousy, lousy.

I was VERY surprised that Tobin Bell signed on for this. I literally laughed out loud every time he appeared on camera. The cheap "jumps" were not scary whatsoever and failed to produce a "jump". Come on!

As far as the nudity, there was NOT that much. Typical teen horror. Some topless shots, but they were very quick or shot from far away. Close-ups of some female behinds (in panties), and a very long moaning scene with two people fulled dressed (he's rubbing her feet. Very PG-13). Friday the 13th's from the 1980's have better nudity...

The movie is BEYOND SLOW and feels like 180 minutes, rather than 90, because you just want it to end!!

Honestly, do not waste your time. If you are considering this movie, please pick something else. Otherwise, you'll be sitting here like me wondering why you wasted 90 minutes of your life. I would have rather cleaned my closet. Seriously.

What you'll think of "Buried Alive" will strongly depend on what you expected up front. If your mind is set for an insignificant but at least non-boring slasher full of gratuitous nudity, gore, and clichéd situations with dumb teenagers, well then you certainly won't feel cheated. If you were hoping to see an above-average and innovative horror movie, then - and I'm sorry to say - you're are just not good at managing expectations; - and it doesn't matter if you based your judgement on promising names on the film poster like Robert Kurtzman ("Wishmaster") or Tobin Bell ("Saw").

Sometimes the plot pretends to be reasonably ambitious (with native American family curses) and crazily perverted (with hints at incestuous desires), but it's fundamentally a banal slasher with sexy sorority coeds parading around barely dressed, loud-mouthed but cowardly jocks smoking soft-drugs, and a geek with glasses providing you with all the required information. Together, they all go to a godforsaken cabin in the desert where it takes an awful long time to get hacked up by a zombie hag who's the first wife of two of the party members' great-great grandfather. Oh, Tobin Bell also stumbles around as unhygienic gold digger who refers to himself in 3rd person.

The battle-axe action is decent, the girls look delicious, and the ending is nicely twisted. The only thing left to say is that the blonde actress negotiated the terms of her contract quite badly. She must take her clothes off all the time, show everything, and die a painful death, whereas the brunette only puts her rear end on display and gets off lightly.