Buried

Rodrigo Cortés directed this 2010 thriller from a screenplay by Chris Sparling. Ryan Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, an American civilian truck driver working in Iraq whose convoy comes under attack. He regains consciousness buried underground in a wooden coffin, with only a lighter and a mobile phone. As his air runs out and the phone's battery drains, he tries to reach the outside world and guide a rescue to his location before time runs out. The film is largely confined to that single space, with most of the other characters heard only as voices on the phone, among them José Luis García Pérez, Robert Paterson, Stephen Tobolowsky, Samantha Mathis and Ivana Miño.

Buried was Cortés's second feature, following 15 Days in 2000 and preceding Red Lights, Down a Dark Hall and Escape. It was produced by Peter Safran, Ken Hirsh and Adrián Guerra, and made on a budget of about 2 million dollars. It went on to take roughly 19 million dollars worldwide, a strong return on that outlay for a contained, single-location film with a small credited cast of twenty.

On IMDb it holds 7 out of 10 from around 176,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.6 out of 10 from about 3,100 votes. A critics' rating of 7.4 out of 10 across 159 reviews places it somewhat above the audience scores, a gap that suggests reviewers responded to the film's formal restraint and sustained tension more readily than general viewers did.