A typical procedural courtroom drama debuting directly on Amazon Prime Video—is it worth the watch? In my opinion, the answer may depend on your taste. Personally, I found myself really enjoying The Burial overall. The film is heavily carried by its central performances, especially that of Jamie Foxx. He’s a naturally charismatic individual, and he effortlessly brings that charm to this film in a manner that I believe few actors could. He portrays the smooth-talker role exceptionally well and also demonstrates great gentleness when the role demands it.
Jurnee Smollet also made a significant contribution to selling the movie. She portrays the opposing attorney, and some of the best moments in the film occur when she and Foxx engage in intense exchanges. Their chemistry, in my opinion, is what largely propels the film forward. Without the two of them, it would feel rather stagnant. The ensemble as a whole is impressive, and Tommy Lee Jones, is as reliable as ever.
The movie had a very similar charm to something like The Trial of the Chicago 7. The script is witty, it’s got plenty of sharp humor and great back and forth between the characters. The arcs are all pretty well explored, we see the growth of them without it feeling cliché or too much like a “I guess we’re not so different, you and I,” type of movie like I was worried about it being. It can run on a little longer than it needs to, and it takes quite a few turns that I don’t entirely think it needed to make.
The Burial is a movie that does it’s best to entice viewers without really challenging them in any major way, which is totally fine for this type of movie. It doesn’t really play into tropes or an trying to overbearing but definitely plays it safe in a lot of ways. You can definitely tell how it’s going to go about halfway through the movie. Again, it’s really solid and is just such a well-done underdog story. I think many will likely love it.
I’m starting to really get sick of this genre of horror. Totally Killer is like this year’s Do Revenge if I had to put it simply. It’s a super cheesy and campy film that does all in on the absurdity while also still trying a little too hard on the dramatic front and not being super successful. It’s like if Scream, Back to the Future and Happy Death Day all had a kid. It’s a messy bunch of films to combine and certainly feels that way.
As for what I enjoyed, I found the slasher element to be quite cool. It does a decent job of keeping the audience guessing. The kills are suitably gruesome, which kept me engaged in this slasher flick. The characters are also rather entertaining, and I believe the actors all deliver serviceable performances. However, the characters make plenty of dumb decisions throughout the film, which can be quite frustrating. It’s a cliché to have horror characters act foolishly, but these characters were laughably moronic.
The humor in Totally Killer can be quite enjoyable. I believe it’s not terrible in how self-aware it is during the more comedic scenes. However, as it attempts to take itself seriously, it tends to lose that self-awareness. I will give it credit for understanding its target demographic. Nevertheless, as a widely appealing horror film, it falls a bit short. It pokes fun at all generations in a similar manner to how Back to the Future did, but with less of the fun and more of a vibe that suggests “people of the past were foolish, and people of the future are clueless,” which creates an odd atmosphere.
Every choice in the movie seemed to be aimed at setting up the plot, but it often didn’t make any logical sense. For instance, why would the solution to resurfacing murders be to go back in time and prevent the murders from happening in the first place? It feels like it would have made more sense for the characters to focus on preventing the recent and more personal murder instead of radically altering the course of history.
What’s frustrating is that this decision was made by one of the supposedly intelligent characters, and it appears to have been done solely for the sake of the plot. If the rest of Totally Killer had been satisfying, I might have overlooked this, but when such inconsistencies are so pervasive, it becomes distracting.
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