Buried

Aroview: A literal puzzle box thriller delivered with confidence and aplomb, this stars a lone Ryan Reynolds as a kidnapped truck driver who is held for ransom in a coffin after his convoy is ambushed in Iraq.

The limited possibilities of the one-room, one-actor premise are pushed to their extreme – and arguably, too far – however for the majority of the 90-minute duration (which one must surrender to, given the question of ‘air supply’), the film maintains a convincing level of anxiety and discomfort that rarely wanes. Claustrophobia aside, Reynolds’s skin-crawling frustrations on a cellphone as he tries to call for help drive much of the story’s real tension, while first-time dir. Cortes works his way around the confined space with Hitchcockian aspirations, and can be considered the real star of the show.

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