Zombie Room

Only an American can make a film that takes entirely place in a small wooden casket buried underground, and still have snakes, fire, explosions, terrorists, hostage plot and a love story, all in a same box (no pun intended). The irony of it is that Buried is not an American film. It just feels like one, down to the last detail. Guess one could call Buried “an American fan film”?

It’s a nice, sunny day somewhere in Ohio. The gentle wind is blowing, and the birds are chirping in the trees paving the streets of a friendly neighborhood. Kids playing outside, BBQ in the backyard. The problem is; we’re not there. We’re somewhere in Iraq, buried in a small wooden box few feet underground, armed with only a lighter and an Arabic language cellphone. The film opens to a pitch black screen, accompanied by heavy breathing. With such a concept – what could possibly go wrong?

Well, let’s see. The biggest problem is Ryan Reynolds, and the paper-thin truck driver character he’s portraying. So we end up having a douchebag – who’s not much of an actor himself – in a casket? Why should anybody want him to get *out* of there?

It’s interesting how close we are to the character, yet how completely irrelevant the guy remains all through the film. Then comes the plot, written possibly by an 8-year-old kid. There’s the evil government, stupid terrorists who don’t even know the currency of US, snakes in a casket, a fire, an air raid, explosions, a hostage plot and emotional moments the wife and the kids – it’s like a season of 24. Without Jack Bauer. In a wooden box.

Watching Buried makes me think if it’s a US remake of a much better European film. Unfortunately, it IS the European film, and we’re left waiting for the US remake.

Stars: 2 / 5

At least it has quite nice posters (apart from the official one):

Casey Affleck manhandles the hottest chicks in Hollywood in a lukewarm serial killer film by Michael Winterbottom.

The best serial killer stories are either very detailed explanations of the mind of the killer, or play around with the mystery of trying to figure it out. In the best of them, we follow the twisted logic of the murdering maniac, and the policeman who – usually fighting against the laziness of his or her’s colleagues – triest to figure the logic out. The Killer Inside Me is an ambitious film trying to combine the two elements together under one roof, but falls flat due to huge number of antagonists – or protagonists, depending what are the “good guys” called in a film where the main character is the “bad guy” – that appear and disappear randomly.

The story – based on a novel by Jim Thompson – kicks off strong, but begins to disintegrate as more and more characters start popping out of nowhere. Michael Winterbottom is doing a good job keeping the visual storytelling nice and clean, but the fight against a script that hasn’t been able to lose the weight of the novel’s complexity is a lost fight. Novel is a novel, film is a film and they go well together only when the filmmaker has enough bullets (and guts) to kill a bunch of darlings on the way.

Casey Affleck plays a fine young policeman somewhere in southern Texas, who meets a hooker (played by always unnaturally beautiful Jessica Alba) who has just settled down in his county. He’s sent out to tell the woman to get the hell out of the town, but accidentally falls into a violent sexual relationship that brings up memories of his childhood and sends him into a murdering spree. Casey is an interesting actor, much more talented and less annoying than his brother Ben, but in The Killer Inside Me the “creaky whining freak” -manner he’s done so well before have reached their limit. Let’s hope he’s able to step out of his comfort zone and reinvent himself in the next films; I know he has the skills for it.

Last, but not least – The Killer Inside Me is a violent film. First thing usually coming in mind from the term “violent” is blood, mayhem and gore, especially if it’s a serial killer flick. Winterbottom treats violence much more violently – by being honest to the camera. The most harrowing thing about violence is what happens in the last seconds of one’s life – the strangeness of the behavior as the brain shuts itself down. But another interesting thing about filmed violence is that if it’s not connected to anything, no matter how brutal, honest or merciless it is, the audience is remains unmoved. As the story keeps on fragmenting, the remains of the emotion that was created in the beginning keeps on fading. Finally, the what’s left is a tepid mess of wishful beginnings. Unfortunately so, since The Killer Inside Me is a film I’d loved to love.