Hype for Rodrigo Cortés’ “Buried” starring Ryan Reynolds has been extremely high ever since the film premiered at Sundance earlier this year (see a recent poster that just keeps amping up that buzz).
About a U.S. contractor working in Iraq who is attacked and then wakes up to find he is buried alive inside a coffin with only a lighter and a cell phone, the picture is a one-man show (mostly just Reynolds in a coffin) and a race against time to escape this claustrophobic death trap.
Surprisingly, no Playlist team members have seen it yet, so anticipation is high for all of us, but we are slightly worried that the buzz is almost too high and it’s just been built up too much.
Cortés previously directed “Dirt Devil” and “The Contestant,” but we’d be lying if we said we were very familiar with his work. Anyhow, a new international trailer has arrived. It’s not vastly different from what we’ve already seen, but it looks suspenseful and it continues to stoke the pictures’ flames, and that’s going to be needed. You think so? We do.
Lionsgate is starting out the picture slowly in limited release on September 24 in the U.S. and then a wide release starts on October 8. The studio clearly knows they have a word-of-mouth potential hit on their hands, but it’s still a relatively small picture and one that audiences could scratch their heads at despite all the critical plaudits. We’ll see.