Coffin (2011) User Reviews

a thriller with a twist at the end

[trashgang · 5/10 · 13 June 2012]

Perfect example to trick the unknown buyers of flicks. Buried (2010) was a must see, so they tried to copy the title, face it, coffin has a lot to do with buried. On the other hand the sleeve also looks very closely to Buried.

But the story is something completely different. We do have two people who are buried in a coffin but there's more going on. It looked promising with the masked villain but once he changed his hood for shades it became ridiculous. And the acting wasn't worth watching too.

Still if you do like thrillers with a plot change then you may like it but it did have an overall low budget look. I just wasn't involved into the characters. No suspense at all just sitting there and thinking at the end, okay but nothing special. I could have known it, it was here already on the sale shelves when it came out.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 0/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

This movie is terrible!

[krachtm · 3/10 · 16 November 2011]

The plot: A psychopath puts Kevin Sorbo and his mistress in a coffin. They only have 70 minutes of air, and time is running out. In the meantime, the mistress's husband races to save them, though he's not entirely sure that he wants to.

Let's just get to the chase here: this is a limp Saw clone. Nothing I say will dissuade hardcore Kevin Sorbo or Saw fans from watching this, of course, but I feel that it's my duty to warn everyone else who's on the fence. Normally, low budget movies with poor acting don't bother me much (I'm a Troma fan), but this was laughably bad! The antagonist was so non-threatening, it was like he was played by Stephen Fry. He tried his best to be "a total pro", but it came across as being pathetic. I could see shades of Jigsaw and Heath Ledger's Joker, but it was like one of your hammy friends doing his best impression (which isn't very good), rather than a professional actor. The rest of the acting was pretty standard for a B movie, though Bruce Davison obviously stands out as a talented actor. Kevin Sorbo isn't bad, but his role is somewhat limited, being that he's trapped in the titular coffin. The directors turn up as cops investigating the case. Surprisingly, they're pretty decent actors. Can't really think of anything nice to say about their writing or directing, though.

I've seen worse, but this is still memorably bad.

If they'd cast a better actor for the antagonist, this might creep up to a 5/10, which isn't really all that much better, but he really ruins this movie. There isn't much violence, gore, nudity, or even profanity in this movie, which makes it perhaps the most curiously inhibited Saw clone that I've ever seen. Perhaps it was meant to be more of a generic thriller, then took on aspects of Saw? Who knows. Who cares. It's a bad movie, and I'm not going to sit here thinking about it.

Dull Buried clone

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 21 March 2015]

The film BURIED, in which Ryan Reynolds found himself suffocating to death inside a coffin for the entire running time, was itself a disappointment, so invariably this rip-off is even worse. Even though it stars B-movie favourite Kevin Sorbo, he of HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS fame, this is dull beyond belief, ruined by a muddled story and a distinct lack of engaging incident throughout.

The storyline involves a boring protagonist who finds that his ex-wife and her lover have been buried alive in a coffin. Along the way, he's taunted by a masked villain who seems to have watched the SAW movies one too many times, and is tasked with paying a ransom demand, but it's all very uninteresting. The plot seems needlessly muddled in places and extremely dragged out in others.

The acting is poor. Patrick Barnitt is as solid as a block of wood as the hero and the villain is nothing more than an annoying kid. Kevin Sorbo is a fan favourite but is barely seen inside the murky coffin; perhaps he should have been the lead. How they roped old-timer Bruce Davison into this mess I don't know, as it's instantly forgettable.

Worth the Rental

[fitsmaster10 · 22 November 2011]

Don't get me wrong, it's not American Beauty, but it's also not trying to be.

Would I pay $16 to see it in theaters? No. But if you're a fan of shows like CSI or Law and Order, or like the Saw movies (with less/no gore), this will be worth your 90 minutes.

Bruce Davison always adds to whatever project he is in. Sorbo is great (but not in it as much as you would think since he's trapped in a box). The other lead, Patrick Barnitt, does a great job (especially for an actor without a lot of credits). I didn't really buy the villain. Just thought it was a bit over the top. I understand maybe he was compensating for size or age, but I agree with the other user, it comes across as a bad impression of Heath Ledger's joker. The rest of the supporting cast does a good job at making even the small roles memorable.

Again, it might not be for everyone, but if you like crime periodicals or thrillers with a twist, this is a fun little movie.

Enjoy!

I thought it was one of the most boring films I have seen.

[poolandrews · 1/10 · 5 August 2012]

Coffin is set in Los Angeles where a woman named Rona Samms (Sunny Doench) & her lover Sean Justice (Kevin Sorbo) both wake up to find themselves trapped inside a wooden coffin, presumably buried underground. They have a lighter for light, a phone which will only accept incoming calls, a video camera so everything they do & say can be seen & only seventy five minutes worth of air. Businessman Jack Samms (Patrick Barnitt) arrives home to find a masked man who calls himself Trick (Johnny Alonso) waiting for him inside, Trick explains that he has kidnapped his wife Rona & the man she is having an affair with & buried them in a coffin, he show's Jack live footage from inside the coffin of Rona & Sean terrified & struggling. Trick demands that Jack pay him a huge ransom to save the two or they will suffocate within seventy five minutes, Jack is left with no options but he is almost broke & has little to offer so has to play Trik at his own game & try to get the upper hand in order to save Rona & Sean...

Directed by Kipp Tribble who also wrote, co-produced & has a small role in it as someone called Scott along with Derik Wingo who is also credited as a producer & a small role playing a character called Epperson this seems to be thought of as a horror film but in reality I would say Coffin is much more of a thriller & not a very good one either. The main problem I had was just how boring it was, even though Coffin only lasts for 85 minutes it doesn't half drag & is so bland & dull that I found myself losing interest several times. How I made it through to the end I'll never know. There's never enough tension or suspense, Coffin is just rather dry & routine to really stand out. The one half decent aspect of Coffin is the twist ending which is alright actually, I didn't see it coming & while it's poorly handled & fails to save the film overall it is at least fairly memorable & in a way quite clever. I suspect that the problem with Coffin is that someone had the idea for the twist ending & thought it was cool but then had the almost impossible task of writing over an hour's worth of padding to proceed it in order to stretch it out to to a full feature length film. Maybe Coffin would have been much better if it had been a 30 minute television program with a breathless pace which would lead up to the twist. The character's are poor, they are either unlikable or badly written, the bad guy is laughable & elicits no menace at all, the two cop's are annoying & the victims trapped inside the coffin are so unlikable you actually wish they would run out of air & just die.

Coffin looks like it was made for television with a very cheap feel to it, very average hand-held type feel to the photography & boring locations. There's absolutely zero gore or nudity in it, there's no sense of humour & not much profanity either in what it a pretty tame & restrained film. The film never really manages to build any momentum or tension to the plight of the character's or the situations, it all feels so staged & a bit half hearted.

With a supposed budget of about $600,000 this had a pretty low budget & it show's, filmed in Los Angeles. The acting isn't great although the cast is better than one may expect, Hercules man Kevin Sorbo, Bruce Davidson from the likes of General Hospital & X2 (2003)& the rest of the cast seem to have a fair amount of acting credits behind them as well.

Coffin is a mystery thriller that never manages to to be thrilling, I just thought it was a pretty dull & boring film I found it impossible to get into, the twist ending did impress me a bit & I liked that but by the time it comes it's far too little far too late.

Not worth the £1 you will pay for it on DVD

[jamesbrown1973 · 2/10 · 24 November 2011]

The first thing to say was the acting was terrible, particularly the main bad guy and the woman in the coffin. I know some of it was down to the direction but anybody who makes Sarbo look like a true thespian must be bad. The story is all over the place and very badly filmed. If they truly spent £600,000 on this I would love to know what that was on, it feels and looks like a very cheap movie.

The main bad guy was so camp I was going to call him "hi de hi" but I love that show. The plot holes in the story would have me calling it Camenmbert - very cheesy.. Don't waste your money, if you have to see it wait until it's on a 12 o'clock showing on a TV channel that has no budget. For all my criticism I have seen worse.

Saved By The Ending But Let Down By Everything Else

[Theo Robertson · 4/10 · 27 February 2014]

Jack Samms comes home after a routine day and finds an intruder in his house who calls himself " Trick " who shows him an event on a laptop - Jack's wife and her lover are trapped , entombed in a coffin and Trick tells Jack that there is only enough air to last another 75 minutes

There's a good film in here somewhere but is destroyed by its own derivative nature for much of the running time . It's a psychological thriller rather than an out and out horror movie but you're constantly reminded of other better films . . Reading the premise I thought I'd be watching something along the lines of the ultra low budget minimalist cult classic BURIED which came out round about the same time but unlike that film COFFIN doesn't have faith in its premise and the vast majority of the action takes place above ground . Likewise the mind games Trick plays on Jack is similar to the SAW movies and DIRTY HARRY . One noticeable thing about the two victims trapped in the coffin is that the mis-en-scene is wrong . Despite there being water leaking in to the coffin there is also sunlight visible , a fact noticed by Jack when he looks on the laptop and this foreshadows the ending which thankfully isn't leftfield and if it had a better director and production values would have made a nifty mainstream thriller

Average low budget movie

[dslr88 · 5/10 · 13 May 2021]

A good idea will be replicated endlessly. Just take one part Buried and a host of other movies based around people trapped in tight places such as car trunks and the like and its what you have here with coffin. Watched this as i became aware of coffin 2 first. Now that i have seen this i am unsure whether i will bother with coffin 2. Its not that gory so it fails even at the torture p0rn it halfheartedly sets out to be. The budget seems to have been mostly spent on the actors salaries. Not bad just not great. Definitely late night watching with a can of beer at hand.

Ridiculous

[berg-74532 · 2/10 · 7 September 2020]

Not one character acts like a normal human. Hercules has a moment when his character says to a woman " I can't believe a woman like you would date a loser like me" he's older than his Hercules character but it's ridiculous. The villain if you can call this little kid that is so over the top he makes Jack Nicholson's Joker seen like a portrayal of Abraham Lincoln. But that seems unfair since all the acting Is much like a kindergarten Christmas play. I'm not sure exactly why they didn't get the actual Iggy Popp for the villain but I'm convinced he would have been better than the tiny 50 year old man that has bangs Hanging down like a clinically depressed middle school goth girl. This movie was a waste of time and money, the plot while it's been done a million times was done so poorly it's funny and it's clear the ending was supposed to have a Shymalanian Sixth Sense sort of twist ending it seemed much more like an episode from Scooby Doo and it even has a pulled off the mask " I would have got away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids" moment just far more contrived and much less fun.

BAd film badly done

[petkanasw · 1/10 · 26 November 2023]

Some reviewers are trying their best to be kind to this film, but it's undeserved. The script is so format, so trite, that it's embarrassing. And the lines are delivered in the most standard way, as if the actors learned by watching awful movies. So much of the emotional delivery is unwarranted, or at least doesn't flow naturally as if real people were talking. It's stilted. It's unreal. It's hamming it up like crazy. My sense is that good acting really couldn't help this script but better actors could have tried. It's frustrating because the script could have been doctored and the actors could have worked harder (or casting might have gotten better ones) because the sets, cinematography, and even the story was not so terrible--it was the execution.

Terrible acting and direction

[cinemagick · 1/10 · 6 September 2020]

I'm pretty sure a group of 12 year old boys could make a better movie. The acting is laughably bad. The director(s) decision to keep these takes is simply criminal. One of the worst movies I've seen on Prime.

Good popcorn flick

[kellyolsen-180-97303 · 8/10 · 29 November 2011]

Nice little thriller with a great twist that you are not expecting. Well done for a small, low budget film.

You might get a little lost in the plot over one particular point but that happens in all kinds of thrillers or mysteries. But it is nothing to make the experience unfulfilling.

Patrick Barnitt does a great job in his first starring role and has a great future ahead of him. Sorbo is convincing when he is on screen as is most of the cast. Good production value considering how little this film was made for.

Barnitt and Alonzo have to carry the story along and they do so with skill. Really impressed with Barnitt's performance.

Unexpectedly above average Cheating Wife thriller

[mrcibubur · 6/10 · 8 February 2012]

This is actually a much better film than I expected and though I only scored it 6 from 10 in the vote ratings, this is definitely above average and compares favourably to 'Buried" from 2011. A similar film about a victim being buried in a coffin.

May I say that although two people are kept in a coffin, the story is not what you may think it is - about anybody being buried below the ground, though of course they could easily be, given the nature of the storyline.

The acting is not great, agreed, but it does not need to be. the script is good enough to carry the story and keeps us gripped until the excellent twist at the end.

The main theme of the story is a cheating wife (and to some extent a cheating husband). There are many unrealistic elements to the film and I might have chosen to call the movie 'Trick" for example.

If it did remind me of another film which does not give the plot away in any way, it is the abuse of the clown in "Vulgar" from a few years ago.

Pay $16 to watch this in a cinema? Why would you? It should be readily available on DVD and that is its intended market, I am quite sure.

Cool Film

[suissenavy · 4 November 2011]

Yeah this one is a great watch, even though the cast are quite forgettable minus the veteran detective. His one liners stand up a few times. But this is a thriller with a great twist, and there is a sequel screaming to be made. It will entertain you, I figured out what was really happening quite early, but it didn't spoil the ending, which was great. This film is certainly not produced so well, but the story carries it to the end and makes it worth the investing the run time. Can't wait for part 2, hope it out does the first, and who knows how that will end. There are flashback sequences to underline the events, and it seems that these are the weakest part, they seemed a little cardboard. Once again however, the writer deserves maximum credit for this yarn of adultery, money and deceit. Well down.

Awesome Thriller

[nikitreats · 10/10 · 1 December 2019]

This is a great movie! Do not believe me? Watch it for yourself.

magic trick?

[pmaynard · 7/10 · 13 March 2013]

The movie was OK not the best movie I have ever seen but it does have what one would expect in a thriller. Unless you have not already seen this movie do not read any further!!(SPOILER)Anyway, in the scene where "Trick" and Jack are in the bar, Trick walks out after getting a call and Jack goes to the bar and asks a guy, who has a bottle of pills and is sitting next to another bar patron, if he can have some (the camera is looking out from behind the bar where a bar tender would stand),the patron asks jack to buy him a drink , when Jack takes the bottle and starts to walk away the scene is now facing towards the bar(outside of the bar) and the other patron is gone!The guy tells him the drink is for a couple of pills not the whole bottle ,Then the scene then goes back from behind the bar and the other bar patron is back! My husband tried to say it was the angle but the two patrons were sitting to close, anyone else notice this?

Good thriller - shows what a bit imagination can do with a small budget - spoilers

[f-sweeney · 7/10 · 5 November 2011]

really liked this film, a small budget does not always mean tacky straight to video slasher type stuff. i didn't guess the plot, which made it more enjoyable. The actors kept the plot moving, with no filler scenes and Bruce Davidson always adds class to support roles.

*****spoiler spoiler

One question and plot hole when Jack kicks Trick out of the car, trick makes a call and says 'he (jack) has taken the money'. i thought for a minute trick took it when he hit the banker, but he didn't have the money. So... how did he manage to give it to rona and sean ?. maybe the small budget didn't allow for a re shoot - but never mind, hopefully the makers will get enough receipts for a sequel

Parent Guide

[hispurplelady · 3 April 2020]

Around 13 to 14.5 minutes a Woman is seen in just a bra and underpants and after she gets dressed cleavage can still be seen.