Just Buried

While there’s certainly plenty of potential within Just Buried‘s premise, which follows Jay Baruchel’s Oliver Whynacht as he, in an effort to keep his failing mortuary from going under, starts offing locals to drum up more business, the off-kilter, relentlessly quirky sensibility employed by writer/director Chaz Thorne ultimately proves to be as wrong a choice for the material as one could possibly imagine. This is despite an opening half hour that’s actually pretty amiable (if not entirely compelling), with stars Baruchel and Rose Byrne certainly playing a significant part in the film’s mild early success (Byrne is particularly effective in a rare comedic role). But there comes a point at which the script’s desire to come off as another Very Bad Things starts to clash with Thorne’s loopy directorial choices, and the film’s various positive attributes are slowly-but-surely crushed beneath the weight of several overtly outlandish elements (including, but not limited to, Darren Fung’s accordian-heavy score). And with the third act ramping up the body count, Just Buried finally becomes a fairly unpleasant piece of work – which effectively cements its status as a sporadically amusing yet entirely uneven misfire.

** out of ****