Review by The Headless Critic

Coffin – 2011

Production by: Skyrocket Productions
Distribution by: Artist View Entertainment



You have 75 minutes to save the life of your cheating wife or be blamed for her murder. Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock…

Jack Samms (Patrick Barnitt) just stepped into a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the masked stranger and the cops hot on their trail. Jack came home to find a burlap masked intruder who calls himself Trick (Johnny Alonso) in his house. Jack’s wife Rona (Sunny Doench) is missing. He’s told she’s buried alive with her not so secret love affair Sean (Kevin Sorbo). Jack has 75 minutes before they run out of air and he is blamed for their deaths. Is this intruder after Jack’s money or is this some far deeper form of retribution? Time is running out and so if the air in their Coffin. Tick, tock, tick, tock…

The Coffin creates immediate peril with a ticking clock and lives on the line. Before we’re introduced to any character their existence is brought into question. Patrick Barnitt successfully makes you care about his character Jack Samms, bringing intrigue into a hidden badass you can see lurking inside. Coffin captives Sorbo and Doench bury themselves well into their roles. Trick (Johnny Alonso) is a little too exposed as a character to bring the intended mystery to his bad guy role. The secondary story of police is far too stereotypical for my taste and seems needed strictly for runtime.

The story plays out more like an extended hour long television drama than a feature movie with similar filming styles. Dialogue throughout the film is a bit spoon fed simplistic with the cops dialogue bordering modern day Dragnet. Barnitt brings interest in the lead character Jack Simms. Unfortunately he doesn’t get fully unleashed in the finale. The Coffin concept is one that we’ve seen a few times before but with a different spin in a fun twist ending.

2 out of 5 Headless Critics