Buried Awake

Feature Script written by Mark Regan

After clawing free from a coffin, a repressed young woman is trapped overnight in a remote house with her apparent abductor, where survival means confronting the truth she has spent years burying.

You cannot bury truth.

Synopsis:

April has always felt invisible and controlled.

After a night out, she wakes inside a coffin, the ultimate expression of a life she never chose. Driven by terror and instinct, she claws her way free, only to find herself trapped inside a sealed, eerily familiar house with Corbin, a man she barely knows.

What begins as a brutal fight for survival soon becomes something stranger and more disturbing.

As fear turns to violence, April is forced to question who is really behind the trap and what they want from her.

To survive the night, April must uncover the truth of her imprisonment and confront the buried trauma that has shaped her life, before the house becomes her grave.

Genre:

Contained psychological thriller.

Running time:

90–105 minutes.

Similar Australian films:

Buried Awake is a contained locked-house thriller like You’ll Never Find Me mixed with the emotional architecture of Relic.

Buried Awake sits alongside acclaimed Australian psychological thrillers including You'll Never Find Me, Godless, Birdeater, Hounds of Love, The Babadook, Relic, Wake in Fright, and The Loved Ones, combining the contained tension, psychological dread, and character-driven suspense that have proven successful with both audiences and critics.

International films to compare with Buried Awake:

It is house-trap thriller like Don’t Breathe with the identity fracture of Split and the dark female-control twist of Gone Girl.

Escape isn’t always freedom.

Frequently Asked Questions

Buried Awake is a psychological thriller about a risk-averse young woman who wakes in a coffin and is trapped overnight in a remote Western Australian house with her abductor, unraveling why she was chosen before dawn.
Mark Regan, an award-winning filmmaker, is both the writer and director, crafting a suspenseful, character-driven story.
The film will be set in a secluded house in Western Australia, and we are currently in the development stage, planning for a future shoot in this atmospheric location.
Buried Awake is a deeply personal story born from ideas and questions that have lived in my mind for years. I am fascinated by the fragility of perception. The moment when you catch something in the corner of your eye and wonder whether it was real or whether your mind created it. That uncertainty sits at the heart of this film.
Through the lens of a psychological thriller, Buried Awake explores themes that matter deeply to me: family, trauma, repression, and the terrifying experience of no longer trusting your own thoughts. The film isn't simply about solving a mystery; it's about confronting the lies we tell ourselves to survive. What excites me most as a writer is challenging audiences to actively engage with the story, piecing together clues and questioning reality alongside the protagonist. Great thrillers become a race between the filmmaker and the audience, and I want viewers constantly questioning what is real until the final revelation.
Buried Awake is a psychological thriller that turns the audience into detectives, only to reveal that the greatest mystery isn't what happened, it's whether we can ever truly trust ourselves.

We are in the script development phase, with filming scheduled for [insert projected timeline]. Stay tuned for updates on release dates and distribution.
You can follow the film’s progress on our official website and social media channels, where we share behind-the-scenes updates and production milestones.
The project is currently in script development. We are refining the screenplay, securing funding, and planning the next steps.
You can support us by following, sharing, and subscribe to my YouTube channel ,, and by joining us as we launch crowdfunding or pre-production events.
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