Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Burying the Ex Blu-ray Movie Review

Dante's Furlough

Reviewed by Michael Reuben July 23, 2015

The uniquely talented Joe Dante hasn't made a studio film since his unfortunate experience with Warner on 2003's Looney Tunes: Back in Action, but the director has kept himself busy with television and independent projects like 2009's haunted house film, The Hole. Dante has described his latest feature as "a film for my fans". Shot in twenty days, Burying the Ex is a horror comedy with a small cast and minimal effects, but Dante says he enjoyed the opportunity to spend more time with the actors than he would have had on an "extravaganza" like Gremlins or Small Soldiers. The script was an expansion by writer and actor Alan Trezza of a fifteen-minute short he directed in 2008. With an impressive cast and Dante filling the frame with his typical flair for detail, the full-length version never feels padded.

Max (Anton Yelchin, Star Trek's Chekhov) is a devoted horror geek whose dream is to own his own novelty and collectibles shop. For now, though, Max has to settle for running an L.A. boutique known as Bloody Mary's for an absentee boss who insists that he adopt bizarre mannerisms like bidding customers adieu by saying: "Go to hell!" (Not everyone gets the joke.) The bright spot in Max's life is his girlfriend, Evelyn (Ashley Greene, The Twilight Saga), a looker who is clearly out of his league but who seems to adore him. The attraction for Evelyn may stem from abandonment issues, because her mother died when she was a child (her father is never mentioned), and she is confident Max will never leave her—so confident that she thinks nothing of taking over his life. An environmental fanatic, Evelyn surprises Max by redoing his apartment in a "green" style, thoughtlessly stuffing his mint condition horror posters into a drawer.

The damaged posters are the last straw, and Max finally listens to the urging of his slacker half-brother, Travis (Oliver Cooper), who has been begging Max to dump Evelyn for a long time. Unfortunately for Max, Evelyn is removed from the picture before he gets the chance to speak up, leaving him grief-stricken and guilty. But wait! What about that devilish red artifact that glowed unseen when the two of them were trysting late one night at Bloody Mary's? Sure enough, just as Max emerges from mourning to connect with Olivia (Alexandra Daddario, San Andreas), a true soul mate who shares his love of all things horror-related, who should climb up out of her grave but a zombified Evelyn? Their love, she tells Max, is eternal.

The tribulations of a boyfriend who can't find a way to break off a relationship that's turning his stomach have never been more graphically portrayed than in Max's constant struggles to evade Evelyn's post-mortem sexual cravings. Meanwhile, he has to keep her deteriorating corpse concealed from the outside world, and especially from Olivia. Anton Yelchin's performance is so natural and convincing that you actually believe Max's unquestioning acceptance of zombies as real. (Half-brother Travis, by contrast, reacts to the discovery of Evelyn's re-animation as one would expect most people to react.) Eventually, of course, Evelyn learns that Max's eye has strayed and flies into a jealous rage made all the more dangerous by her posthumous indestructibility and zombie super-strength. She also develops the inevitable taste for brains, which, in a typical Joe Dante touch, is awakened by viewing a classic splatter film by one of the genre's originators, Herschell Gordon Lewis.

There's a happy ending, of course. It says so right in the title. What better way for a newly matched pair of horror nerds to bond than by (literally) burying the ex that tried to keep them apart?

Burying the Ex Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Specific information about the shooting format was not available, but Burying the Ex is visibly a digital production, with post-production completed on a digital intermediate. The cinematographer was Jonathan Hall (MTV's Teen Wolf). Image Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, which was presumably sourced from digital files, features a clean, sharp and detailed image, which does equal justice to the daytime scenes in bright L.A. sun and the dark interiors at Bloody Mary's shop with its array of horror trivia, all of which was no doubt carefully selected and arranged by Dante. A night scene in a graveyard for a special showing of Night of the Living Dead (a perfect date for Max and Olivia) features solid blacks and good shadow detail. The practical makeup effects that transform Evelyn into a zombie have the right shades of red, pink and yellow (for embalming fluid), and the numerous shades of green with which Evelyn surrounded herself in life serve as appropriate contrast.

With no extras, Image has mastered the film on a BD-25 with an average bitrate of 28.98 Mbps, which is excellent for digitally acquired material.

Burying the Ex Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Burying the Ex's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, is effective in conveying essential sound effects like the cracking of bones that accompany some of Evelyn's movements after death (she insists on continuing to do yoga) and several other "jump" events that it's better to let the viewer discover. A general sense of environment for various locales has been placed in the surrounds, but the film is largely front-oriented. Dialogue is clear, and the score by Joseph LoDuca, who scored both of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films, strikes a perfect balance between comedy and horror.

Burying the Ex Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Although Dante has said that there is significant deleted material—notably, scenes with Max's boss, "Bloody Mary", played by Mary Woronov—no extras are included. At startup, the disc plays trailers for All Cheerleaders Die, Digging Up the Marrow and Odd Thomas, which can be skipped with the chapter forward button and are not otherwise available once the disc loads.

(If you wait until after the credits, the film includes a special effects outtake, but this hardly constitutes an "extra".)

Burying the Ex Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

We can only hope that, one of these days, Joe Dante will get a real budget and another chance to make a major motion picture. (He is reportedly working on a film about the experiences of his mentor, Roger Corman, with LSD—which certainly sounds like something I would like to see.) In the meantime, Burying the Ex is a reminder of the unique touch that Dante can bring to even the smallest project. Highly recommended.