What Is Buried Must Remain review
Lebanon brings us a found footage ghost story with a good reason to be found footage, a house full of ghosts, and one of the more interesting ideas in recent memory.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Streaming on Screambox April 12th.
What Is Buried Must Remain
Directed by Elias Matar
Written by Edward E. Romero
Starring Asthma Jumaa, Hassan Alkhlefe, Hamza Zahab, Ahmad Alrefai, Ahmed Khreta, Dahlia Nemlich and Elie Cortine
What Is Buried Must Remain Review
We can’t talk about the most interesting aspect of What Is Buried Must Remain. That’s always a knee-capper when you sit down to write a review. There’s an idea that plays out in the background of Screambox’s upcoming release that eventually works its way to the forefront. Whether you want to call it a twist or a reveal or any other label you can affix to it…it’s inspired storytelling. Inspired storytelling that…we can’t talk about.
So, let’s dive into what we can talk about. What Is Buried Must Remain is a found footage movie from Lebanon. Three friends head to a legendary local house to film a documentary. The movie stocks its haunted house with spirits and lore in equal measure. Sanities begin to dwindle as more and more of the house’s residents make the presence known. What begins as creaking floors and slamming doors becomes resetting rooms and ghostly visions. With, seemingly, no way out…the group finds themselves at the mercy of centuries of trapped spirits.
Our guides on this journey are Lara (Asthma Jumaa), Alaa (Hassan Alkhlefe) and Shadi (Hamza Zahab). Lara is a do-gooder type. A social media personality with a heart of gold. Rare to see the influencer character type portrayed as such. Alaa is a cynical man who treats his friends poorly. He’s kind of a dick, to be honest. Shadi is Alaa’s friend who puts up with his bullying. He clearly has feelings for Lara. Given their characteristics…it won’t be a surprise to find that the spirits of Fontaine House target Alaa to corrupt.
They aren’t alone in the house…and I don’t mean the ghosts who outnumber them. During their stay the group comes across Abdallah (Ahmad Alrefai), a junkie squatting in the house. He can communicate with the ghosts because, according to him, his drug use keeps him on the line between life and death. Of course, that sounds like something a ghost would say. Either way (we do find out) he imparts a lot of wisdom on the trio. Not that it helps them find the exit in an ever-changing building. Hallways seem to turn around…rooms changing locations at each pass.
They come upon several different ghosts during their night in the house. From the Fontaine family that the ghostly legends are based upon to something much older. Lara becomes infatuated with helping a child she can hear (and later see) inside the house. Andallah explains that the child is dead already. Trapped inside the house like the rest of the spirits. If you die here…you stay forever. The child turns out to be a helpful spirit…attempting to aide Lara in her quest to escape.
Unfortunately, the Fontaines corrupt Alaa…leaving Sahid and Lara with a very corporeal problem. An axe wielding Alaa stalks them through the home. There are some effective scares in What Is Dead Must Remain…and they come in a nice variety of ways. Is Abdallah trustworthy? Will Alaa’s Jack Torrance routine prevent the others from surviving the night? What is up with the creepy chalk drawings that keep appearing?
What Is Dead Must Remain justifies its usage of found footage by connecting it to the trio’s entire reason for being in the house to begin with. With three cameras rolling the movie can provide a full view of the adventure. It also keeps the shaky cam to a minimum. There’s a wonderful line discussing stabilizers for the equipment that is filled with purpose. Even the in-universe characters hate shaky cams.
There are times during What Is Dead Must Remain where you’ll wonder if everything that happens makes sense. On one notable occasion we see through Lara’s phone that what she thinks she is seeing isn’t really there. A cool moment…but one that doesn’t fully jibe with other things we see through the cameras. There is an attempt at an explanation for this that works well enough…but I’m not sure it holds up to further inspection.
And, of course, there is the thing we can’t talk about. The story has some twists and turns along the way. The smallest one may be its most interesting. It’s played subtly in the wake of some much larger moments…but is fascinating in its own right. It’s what I was thinking about when the film ended. An exercise in shifting focus between character perspectives that is as clever as anything you’ll see. What Is Dead Must Remain doesn’t over-dramatize it…which makes it even more effective. I can’t say more…but it makes What Is Dead Must Remain a haunted house worth spending the night in.
Scare Value
A haunted house story that delivers a suitably haunted house. There is some deep lore to uncover inside the Fontaine house. The movie saves its best trick for the end…revealing a more interesting storytelling idea than you’d expect. There’s even a good application of found footage. I’m not sure everything added up completely in the end…but there’s a fun watch along the way.
3.5/5
What Is Buried Must Remain Link
Streaming on Screambox April 12
