Just Buried (2008) - By Duane L. Martin

Film Reviews: Just Buried (2008) - By Duane L. Martin
Posted on Friday, May 01, 2009 @ 15:08:36 Mountain Daylight Time by Duane

I see a lot of films as a reviewer, but every once in a while I get one sent to me that's a step above and really nails every aspect of what makes a great film. Just Buried from writer/director Chaz Thorne is just such a film.

Just Buried is the story of a nerdy guy named Oliver Whynacht (Jay Baruchel) who inherits a funeral home in a rural town from his father that he really had very little contact with. When he and his pastor brother showed up for the will reading, they found out that their father had married a really hot blonde from the town trailer park and (though they didn't know this at the time) was also schtupping Roberta Knickel (Rose Byrne), the girl who worked for him doing the embalming and make up on the corpses.

The story is far too long, involved and twisted to get into here, but the long and the short of it is that after a night out drinking, Oliver and Roberta are drunkenly driving back home and hit a local pissy Swiss guy who was an avid walker. He ends up dead, so Roberta breaks his neck and they throw him over a cliff. From that point on, they start having to kill more people to cover up that initial death, including a local celebrity, Roberta's cop boyfriend, Roberta's father, who was the police chief, as well as another funeral director from a competing funeral home who was stealing their business. It's not until the end that the plot twist happens, which I won't reveal here. Suffice it to say that this story is really involved and incredibly fun.

There are really several elements at play here that make this such an incredibly entertaining and fun movie. The story was absolutely well thought out, twisted and absolutely beautifully written. When you have a story this great, it takes a great cast to play it out on the screen. Every single person in this cast, without exception, was simply amazing. The production quality as well was far beyond anything I had expected. Everything from the camera work to the set design to the costumes, locations and music score...all absolutely perfect for this film.

The best thing about this film is that it's a black comedy, and Chaz Thorne, judging by what I saw in this film, is a master of the genre. It takes a lot to shock me into saying "Holy crap!", but man, the scene where the local celebrity gets killed...that did it. It was so quick and unexpected and just absolutely hilarious that it was really shocking. That's what I love most about this film. It's twisted, but in a good way. Some people make films that are twisted for little more than the sake of gross out shock value or simply so they can attempt to be "quirky". This film however has a sense of fun that permeates it throughout, so every time something happens, you're sitting there with this great big smile on your face, totally amused by the whole situation. Chaz Thorne just "gets it" when it comes to this genre of film, and it was a pleasure to have had the chance to review this.

Normally my reviews are longer, but that's generally because I cover more about the story. In this case, the story is so tangled and involved that there's really no way to get into it without giving away some of the more fun points of the plot that the viewer should see for themselves. Suffice it to say that you should literally go straight from reading this review over to Amazon and pick yourself up a copy. By the way, ignore that review comment on Amazon, it's totally wrong. This movie is endlessly entertaining and I couldn't recommend it more.

If you'd like to find out more about this film, you can check out the film's website and view the trailer at http://justburiedthemovie.com.