20 Movies That Took HUGE Risks (And NAILED It)
19. Taking Place Entirely In A Coffin - Buried
Single-location films are incredibly tough to pull off no matter how talented a filmmaker might be, but Rodrigo Cortés' 2010 horror-thriller Buried took this to basically ridiculous extremes, given that the movie takes place entirely inside a coffin in which protagonist Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) is indeed buried.
When the film was announced, there were reasonable assumptions that at least some of the movie would be set outside the coffin, because a film set wholly within the confines of a pine box seemed basically impossible.
But in what's frankly a flabbergasting accomplishment, Cortés doesn't cheat the audience or take the easy way out for cutaways - we're genuinely in the coffin with Conroy for the entire 95-minute runtime.
It's ultimately a testament to Ryan Reynolds' thoroughly engaging performance, the tight script, and some of Cortés' more creative camerawork that Buried remains so engaging from start to finish even with such a drastically confined setting.