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.
