20 Horror Movie Characters We NEVER See

The brilliance of 2010's horror-thriller Buried is that the entire film only shows one single character on-screen - the ill-fated American truck driver Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds), who ends up buried alive in a wooden coffin while working in Iraq.

Though the film is basically The Ryan Reynolds Show, he does speak with numerous other characters over the phone, most prominently Dan Brenner (Robert Paterson), the head of the Hostage Working Group who attempts to locate Paul and save him before it's too late.

And while audiences might expect that they'll get to see Dan at the triumphant end of the movie when Paul is inevitably rescued, that isn't quite what happens.

In a devastating twist ending, Dan actually isn't able to rescue Paul in time, leaving him to be suffocated to death as the coffin is filled with sand and all Dan can do is profusely apologise for not making it.

Keeping the camera in the coffin with Paul the entire time makes his isolation that much more palpable, and having his only possibility of salvation be a remote, disembodied voice we can never put a face to only further hammers that point home.