Buried Alive starts as cousins Rene (Leah Rachel) & Zane (Terence Jay who also composed the music) decide to spend a weekend at a family ranch in the middle of the desert, Rene wants wants to play some tricks on two sorority wannabes Laura (Erin Reese) & Julie (Lindsey Scott) while Zane wants to search for some legendary buried gold. On the way there Zane has a few strange visions of a ghostly old woman holding an axe, doing some research it turns out that Rene & Zane's ancestor buried his first wife alive although her body was never found. As the teenage friends try to enjoy themselves it seems that the vengeful ghost of the buried woman has returned to seek revenge on the ancestor's of the man that murdered her...
Directed by Robert Kurtzman who used to be part of KNB Effects buts seems to like directing horror films as much as providing gory make-up effects for them, while Buried Alive is competent as a teen slasher I suppose I expected a little bit more. There are several problems with Buried Alive that are common for this type of direct to video horror fare, the biggest problem is surely the pace & the fact that it's so bloody slow. The first kill doesn't happen until the fortieth minute & then nothing else happens until the final fifteen minutes when things finally pick up & the script realises that it's a horror film & not a cure for insomnia. The character's are walking clichés, there's a spotty nerd type who wears glasses & carries a laptop around all the time, there's the bitchy popular girl & her jock boyfriend, there's a crazy local who warns the kids about dangers & the whole back-story about the woman being buried alive & coming back for revenge is underwhelming. The majority of Buried Alive feels like padding, the subplot about Zane not taking his pills is seemingly pointless for instance & why does he start having visions even before they reach the ranch? Why is the ghost visible to some of the character's some of the time & not other's when at the end she is visible to everyone? At a shade over 90 minutes there's very little story here & the idiot, annoying, clichéd character's make the film a drag to watch & the lack of any proper kills until the last fifteen minutes means Buried Alive is a bit of a chore to sit through.
Even though there's no much here the gores pretty good, someone is chopped down the middle with an axe & the two halves of his body are seen later, there's some blood splatter & a cool bit where someone gets his face sliced off with an axe but disappointingly some of the kills are off screen. As well as gore there's a bit of nudity & virtually all the tasks & pranks played on the two sorority babes involve them taking their clothes off. Although set mainly in the daylight to start with the end is set at night & Kurtzman directs things adequately, it's not that scary really though & the shock ending isn't that good either. Buried Alive is a fairly generic sounding title & there are at least ten other films that use the title.
Filmed in Santa Fe in New Mexico this is well made with surprisingly good production values, it actually looks like a professional film even though it's rather dull at times. The acting is OK at vest, Tobin Bell for Saw fame gets about five minutes of screen time.
Buried Alive is well made & has one or two decent gore scenes but the sluggish pace & predictable plot means actually sitting though it is harder than it should have been. Could have been fun, it isn't.
Directed by Robert Kurtzman who used to be part of KNB Effects buts seems to like directing horror films as much as providing gory make-up effects for them, while Buried Alive is competent as a teen slasher I suppose I expected a little bit more. There are several problems with Buried Alive that are common for this type of direct to video horror fare, the biggest problem is surely the pace & the fact that it's so bloody slow. The first kill doesn't happen until the fortieth minute & then nothing else happens until the final fifteen minutes when things finally pick up & the script realises that it's a horror film & not a cure for insomnia. The character's are walking clichés, there's a spotty nerd type who wears glasses & carries a laptop around all the time, there's the bitchy popular girl & her jock boyfriend, there's a crazy local who warns the kids about dangers & the whole back-story about the woman being buried alive & coming back for revenge is underwhelming. The majority of Buried Alive feels like padding, the subplot about Zane not taking his pills is seemingly pointless for instance & why does he start having visions even before they reach the ranch? Why is the ghost visible to some of the character's some of the time & not other's when at the end she is visible to everyone? At a shade over 90 minutes there's very little story here & the idiot, annoying, clichéd character's make the film a drag to watch & the lack of any proper kills until the last fifteen minutes means Buried Alive is a bit of a chore to sit through.
Even though there's no much here the gores pretty good, someone is chopped down the middle with an axe & the two halves of his body are seen later, there's some blood splatter & a cool bit where someone gets his face sliced off with an axe but disappointingly some of the kills are off screen. As well as gore there's a bit of nudity & virtually all the tasks & pranks played on the two sorority babes involve them taking their clothes off. Although set mainly in the daylight to start with the end is set at night & Kurtzman directs things adequately, it's not that scary really though & the shock ending isn't that good either. Buried Alive is a fairly generic sounding title & there are at least ten other films that use the title.
Filmed in Santa Fe in New Mexico this is well made with surprisingly good production values, it actually looks like a professional film even though it's rather dull at times. The acting is OK at vest, Tobin Bell for Saw fame gets about five minutes of screen time.
Buried Alive is well made & has one or two decent gore scenes but the sluggish pace & predictable plot means actually sitting though it is harder than it should have been. Could have been fun, it isn't.