One title that I have been skipping over while perusing the streaming services is Just Buried (2007).  Mainly, my avoidance is due to a lack of familiarity.  Though I have reviewed plenty of obscure movies, most of the time I try to go for something with some semblance of popularity.  While there are a few names here you will recognize, it is a film I had heard nothing about until noticing it among Netflix’s offerings.  When I pause on something while scrolling, I try to picture how I might discuss it from a Catholic perspective.  The brief description for today’s entry says that it is about a young man who in inherits a funeral home.  The Church sees care for the recently deceased to be one of the Seven Corporal Acts of Mercy.  As such, I figured I could get a decent discussion out of this one.  What I got was something else entirely.

Brothers Father Jackie (Sergio Di Zio) and Oliver Whynacht (Jay Baruchel) do not know what they are getting at the beginning of Just Buried.  They are driving to the funeral of their estranged dad, Rollie Whynacht (Jeremy Akerman), whom they have not seen in years.  It has been long enough that they are surprised to meet dad’s latest trophy wife, the much younger Luanne (Reagan Pasternak).  She gets a little too familiar with the sons, prompting the ever-nervous Oliver to go for a car ride on his own.  Because he is distracted, he almost runs over Armin Imholz (Slavko Negulic), a German immigrant and hiking enthusiast who flicks off Oliver for negligence.  Oliver’s wanderings eventually take him to the funeral home where the service is to take place.  The first person he meets is Henry Sanipass (Graham Greene), Rollie’s assistant, who directs Oliver down to the morgue where Roberta Knickle (Rose Byrne) is working.  She is the mortician, and it is implied that there had been some kind of connection between her and Rollie.  That connection means that she is in the room when the deceased’s video will is read aloud.  In it, Rollie spins a wheel with his two sons name on it, along with Luanne and Roberta, as to who will inherit everything.  The lot lands on Oliver, and the hapless young man now has a failing business to run.  I say “failing” because Wayne Snarr (Christopher Shore) has opened a competing funeral parlor and is getting all the requests for burials.  A panicked, nose bleeding Oliver says goodbye to his brother, and is soon going out for drinks with Roberta.  Up to this point, my Catholic instincts were intact.  However, this is when things get crazy.  Oliver and Roberta get drunk, and when he suggests he is not in a fit state to drive, she says people in town operate motor vehicles under the influence all the time.  Along the way, he hits Armin, killing the German.  Oliver is agitated, to put it mildly, but Roberta remains collected.  Instead of calling the police, they conspire to throw the corpse over the rail into a ravine to make it look like an accident.  As they drive away, a nearly inconsolable Oliver is repeatedly told by Roberta that everything will be okay.  She has this confidence because she is also the county coroner, meaning she has a say in determining the cause of death.  She begins this process by being summoned to the scene by her father, Chief Knickle (Nigel Bennett) of the local constabulary.  Also coming to the site is Pickles (Brian Downey), a retired television clown turned amateur sleuth.  He has an alternate theory on what happened, but can prove nothing for the moment.  As for Armin’s family, they choose Oliver’s outfit to provide all the services.  During the wake, Pickles shows up with Armin’s walking stick, the one item that might tie Oliver and Roberta to the crime.  Later that night, they decide to try and retrieve the item from Pickle’s home, but misjudge how long it takes for him to do his awful, voyeuristic activities.  Catholic decorum prevents me from describing them further.  At any rate, he finds Oliver and Roberta in his house, and as they fight over the staff, Pickles falls on a bit of metal that punctures his eye socket, resulting in instant death.  What makes matters worse is when Chief Knickle shows up for their weekly card game.  While they are able to avoid police detection, they set up Pickle’s body to look like he fell out of a tree and impaled himself on his telescope.  Unfortunately, his loved ones decide to employ Wayne.  This is a blow because, while Armin’s funeral helped, Oliver is still in the red.  Further, Luanne has been coming on to him so that she does not have go back to living as a pauper.  This makes the affair Oliver is carrying on with Roberta complicated, made double so by the fact that she is sleeping with Charlie Richmond (Thomas Gibson), the one deputy in town.  Roberta comes up with the idea of blowing up Snarr’s building with him inside of it, thereby eliminating the competition.  They do so, and the money starts flowing in, but Oliver’s feelings for Roberta do not dissipate.  Instead, she continues to be with Charlie even when it comes to light that he might have evidence to suggest Oliver had killed Pickles.  Instead, Oliver blackmails Roberta into writing a note to Charlie that she is in love with another man.  They then knock out the deputy and drive his squad car into the water.  With Charlie out of the way, and despite Father Jackie’s caution, Oliver decides to marry Roberta.  On the day of the ceremony, though, Chief Knickle is overheard saying that they have found the truck involved in Armin’s death.  This prompts Oliver to race to the junkyard and murder Chief Knickle.  Once Oliver returns, Roberta reveals that this has all been a part of her plan to gain ownership of the funeral home, eventually killing her new husband.

With all the killing that takes place in Just Buried, can you see where the film went off the rails for this Catholic?  I could have commented, as I discussed in the introduction, on how much of a blessing it is to take care of the dead.  Actually, there is a bit of this that happens, and when the film is not trying to be funny and gross at the same time, we see Roberta being dignified in her craft.  It is all ruined when they sneak into Snarr’s business and replace Pickle’s internal organs with lithium batteries in order to trigger the deadly explosion.  During this sequence, she casually yanks parts from the chest cavity and throws them into plastic bags.  We treat cadavers with respect because the Church views them as temples of the Holy Spirit.  Further, they were made by the hand of God, and therefore deserve to be treated well.  It is part of a blasé attitude towards death in general that makes the film difficult to watch.  As such, if there is anything to take away from the film, it is that this is basically the opposite of Catholic teaching.  It is not so much the cremation that happens to every one of these bodies.  This is also a misunderstanding with Catholicism.  We believe that cremation is okay, so long as, again, the proper reverence is paid to the remains.  Herein there is another contradiction of Church guidelines.  As Oliver and Roberta are fighting in the final scenes, he throws ashes in her face.  That is not reverent.  This is needed, too, because our bodies will rise on the last day.  Nobody knows how that will look, but having a better disposition towards them is good practice for that eventuality.

If, for some reason, you eventually get around to watching Just Buried, then I hope you stop after a few minutes.  Not only is it unfunny and depressing, but it set in Canada at a time of year when nothing is growing.  It works for the theming, but it does not make one feel good.