Burial: Sad-Sack ‘Political Thriller’ Awash in Spoilers, Bereft of Chills

By Thom Ernst

Rating: C+

Burial, the latest film from director Ben Parker (Girl on the Third Floor), could pass as a decent enough political thriller but for a marketing strategy that fails the film in ways that it might never recover. And then, in an unconscionable move beyond wisdom and movie etiquette, the film’s single plot twist is revealed in a one-line synopsis appearing in the press release.

Perhaps that tidbit of reveal is intended for press only, but the secret is out and there is no turning back. Still, to keep the integrity of the film intact —though a somewhat futile effort given the filmmakers’ disinterest in doing the same—I’ll refrain from spoilers which have already be spoiled.

The title vaguely suggests something grave and ominous, which it does not quite deliver on. But a misleading title is a minor infraction compared to the expectation that follows announcement of the movie’s premiere at London’s Fright. Either Burial is a film that fails horribly at being frightful or the London Fright Fest is ironically void of fright.

Save for a brief sequence shot in a dense forest cloaked in impenetrable darkness, Burial does not appear to be a movie that had any intentions of being scary. Granted, the film has a tense beginning that might leave you believing otherwise.

An older woman (Harriet Walter replacing the late Diana Rigg) lives alone in what appears to be an isolated country home. Her dog yaps manically at the door. Anna opens the door to let the dog out, forgetting to lock the door behind her.

The camera lingers on the unlocked door as Anna walks up the stairs. The doorknob turns, and an unknown intruder steps inside. This familiar opening takes the audience beyond the film’s timeline, anticipating what evil might wait ahead and peering beyond the frame to see what might be hidden in the shadows.

If the accusation weren’t so damning, I would speculate that the programmers of the London Fright Fest had turned off the film after the opening sequence for things quickly shifts from suspense into something cryptic, hoping, perhaps, to carry the viewer through the next 90 minutes of flashbacks.

The story traces back to the final days of WWII. Anna Marshall is an intrepid young female soldier tasked with escorting a coffin through occupied Poland into Moscow. Anna is the sole woman in a group of all-male Russian soldiers.

Anna’s instructions are to bury the coffin every night without fail. Things become more complicated when a platoon (assuming a group of Russian soldiers is indeed called a platoon) is divided. This happens first by the gun of a sniper—perhaps German, perhaps the last efforts from a lone Polish patriot, or maybe they are the target of Werewolves, a German sub-military group given to guerilla-warfare tactics—and later by their own accord.

I suspect it is through these ‘Werewolves’ that the film gains some of its unwarranted reputation as something more promising than a thriller, and again in an added bit of hallucinogenic fun when the unseen sniper (who has been systematically picking off the soldiers) releases a poisonous gas.

Despite Parker’s apt depictions of the atrocities of war, including but not limited to misogyny, harassment, abuse of power, and crimes committed without accountability, it is a story weakened by allowing the audience to know more than the characters. Careless reveals render a potentially suitable thriller into a merely passable one.

Burial. Directed by Ben Parker. Starring: Charlotte Vega, Harriet Walter, Tom Felton, and Barry Ward. Opens in select theatres September 2.