Buried Alive - Sepolti vivi

Buried Alive was directed by a man who is pretty known in the genre, Robert Kurtzman and while his work as a special effects artist is pretty respectable, his work as a director is definitely expendable, at least in this movie. You have lots of pretty bad effects and actors that can't act, add to that that the plot is not really interesting and the pacing definitely has issues. Also for some reason two of the female characters are taking their clothes off in every chance they get for some reason and don't get me wrong I don't mind nudity in horror movies at all but it just felt so out of place and unnecessary that it really made me uncomfortable. One of the very few and things that is enjoyable in this movie is that it is starring Tobin Bell, but even he is more of a side character. While this movie is not completely terrible or complete trash it's definitely not recommendable in my opinion. [4,1/10]

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.

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.

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

OK, Tobin Bell was in this one, but that is just about it.

I really didn't find it to be more than the standard teen scare flick with a bunch of kids running around yelling and screaming. Maybe here just isn't anything new. Well, I don;t believe that because I did see a new horror film a few weeks ago with some original action and scare. Make me jump out of my seat!

The only salvation was Lindsey Scott in her first full length film. I want to see much more of her, even if there isn't much more to be seen after this. She belongs in horror and directors should be listening.

Oh, well, it passed the time.