In this made for TV movie (it was originally developed for broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel, though it's really not science fiction, go figure), Vincent Spano plays a man named Mark Decker who has just gotten over some relationship problems with his wife and so is stoked to be moving them into an apartment where they'll all live happily ever after. The added bonus is that his father in law owns the complex and will make sure that they're well looked after while they stay there.

While a team of construction workers are on the job at a nearby site, they detonate an explosion meant to clear some land and inadvertently cause a massive landslide to barrel into the area and it manages to gain enough speed that it completely buries that apartment building that Mark and his family have just moved into. Mark, his son, his father in law and a few other supporting characters that are completely unremarkable find themselves trapped under all of the dirt and debris and in a race for their lives to find their way out!

Thankfully for Mark, his wife (Alexandra Paul of Baywatch) left for the grocery store and she's still safe and sound above the rubble. She soon figures out that something is wrong aside from the landslide and some clever detective work on her part reveals the fact that the landslide was actually a deliberate attempt on the part of a crooked land developer to ruin her father's real estate projects. Will Mark and the rest of the victims make it out alive if his wife is able to sort out the logistics up top or will everyone die a horrible, horrible death all in the name of greed?

Buried Alive, which was originally known as Landslide, takes a while to get going and unfortunately suffers from some poor production values and ham-fisted acting for the first twenty to thirty minutes. This makes it hard to get into the film and when the landslide finally happens and some danger and excitement finally begins to mount, it's tough to care about the characters as much as we need to in order to really stay on the edge of our seat for the last half of the movie. Things do definitely get better towards the end and the script has a few suspenseful moments here and there as well as a couple of decent twists in the plot but it isn't enough when we aren't all that concerned about the people who are in danger in the first place. Giving Mark a wife and child makes him sympathetic but we don't know enough about him beyond that to truly care and in fact some of the supporting characters, the pregnant lady for example, are kind of annoying and more than a little bit on the cliché side. The most interesting character in the film is the wife and seeing as she's safely above ground, we don't have to be as concerned for her.

That being said, the last half hour of the movie does manage to build a few moments here and there where we can get behind Mark and his plight and hope he makes it out on top. It's too little too late but it's not a completely worthless movie in that it serves its purpose as a more or less brainless time killer. It takes a while to get going and it is definitely a by the numbers approach to storytelling (we've seen all this before and we've seen it done better in other disaster movies with better casts and better effects) but the few shining moments that do pop up just often enough to keep us marginally interested are there. In the end, it's typical made for TV movie fare and it encompasses a lot of the problems that are part and parcel for that type of production but it's certainly no worse than the rest and it might even be just a little bit better – just don't expect a masterpiece.

Video:

The picture is presented in a pretty good-looking 1.33.1 fullscreen transfer and judging by the compositions, this is its original aspect ratio (which makes sense as it was originally a made for TV movie). There are some mild compression artifacts present during a couple of the darker scenes and some mild blurring during a few of the action scenes in addition to some mild edge enhancement but none of it is overly severe. Colors look pretty bold and robust and the flesh tones in the film remain lifelike without turning too pink or too orange. It isn't a perfect transfer as there is some heavy aliasing in spots but overall it isn't too bad.