The Elias Matar directed and co-written supernatural found footage horror, What Is Buried Must Remain has a few firsts for me. It is the first Lebanese horror film I have ever seen, and it is also the first film I have seen that has its primary language spoken as Arabic. In fact, this is the first film of any genre I have seen that uses both those two things. Much like the optimistic protagonist Lara states, people are just people wherever you go, and so this found footage horror followed a familiar path to others before it.
Lebanese teenager Lara (Asma Jumaa) has teamed up with two older friends, refugees Alaa (Hassan Alkhlefe) and Shadi (Hamza Zahab) to help them with making a documentary. There is an old French colonial house in the area which is reputed to be haunted, the plan is to spend a night in the place looking for evidence of ghostly activity, with the hope their documentary will be successful enough that they will be able to leave their poor existence behind them. Once at the house things start to go wrong, with it evident that the place is legitimately haunted, both by hostile and friendly ghosts. With the place seeming able to transform itself around them, the three friends soon become lost within it, and must work together to try and find a way to escape.
I was pulled in to begin with thanks to the setting. Little I have seen of Lebanon over my lifetime has been good, mainly from news reports, so it was fresh to see a country from the perspective of normal people who live there. The majority of the movie takes place inside the colonial house, but the introduction sequence with the friends travelling there was very interesting to watch. I thought the house looked fantastic, the dilapidated building was dirty and full of trash, with it easy to believe that ghosts could actually be there. In my head, this was like if The Blair Witch Project had entirely been set in the building the hapless heroes find themselves in at the end, with some ghostly possession straight out of The Shining thrown in for good measure.
Much of the film is found footage, with one sequence around the halfway mark that became a traditionally shot one, not feeling out of place. It makes sense the characters would be filming everything as most of this takes place at night in a building that has no power, and so characters are using the light from their phones and cameras to see their way around the place. At just over an hour and a half long, this did feel like it dragged ever so slightly. It does really pull itself together for the final act, and while the twists and turns are something I have seen before, I felt they were executed effectively here.
The core protagonists were all different, Lara was someone who you couldn't help but like due to her optimism, typically the characters of a found footage horror are older than she was, and have some obvious flaws. I couldn't help but feel sorry for her due to how nice she was shown to have been. Shadi is in the middle, a bit of a coward, who doesn't really have strong opinions, happy to side either with Lara or Alaa depending on the situation. Alaa was the most complex character here, with it heavilyself implied that he has had a bit of a dark past, something alluded to when the character sees visions of him as a masked soldier executing someone. A definite angry streak in him, giving him a bit of a wildcard feel. Some of the side characters also shone, especially Dahlia Nemlich as the ghost of the French wife of the original owner of the house, Mariam Fontaine, I loved her creepy smiles and stares. I also liked Ahmad Alrefai's Abdallah; a junkie that the trio find squatting in the building, and who provides some context for exactly what is happening.
What Is Buried Must Remain was surprisingly familiar for me despite the new and unknown setting. While scenes of characters wandering around the building in first person could have been edited down somewhat, especially in the middle act, I thought the setting looked great, and the well told story was handled brilliantly, even if there were few real surprises. Also, while the use of CG was obvious, it was implemented well, with it not distracting in the slightest. What Is Buried Must Remain is available to view on EST/VOD/SVOD, with it coming to other streaming platforms such as Indie Box and Tubi from 26th November.
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