Just Buried is a 2007 Canadian film written and directed by Chaz Thorne. It stars Jay Baruchel and Rose Byrne.
When Oliver Whynacht (Baruchel) inherits his estranged father's funeral home, he discovers it is almost bankrupt. After a night of drinking with Roberta Knickel (Rose Byrne), he kills a local man with his truck. Roberta, who is both the local coroner and funeral home embalmer, helps Oliver stage the body so that it appears like an accident. However, when suspicion is raised that the death may not be accidental, Oliver and Roberta realize that they have to kill again. This need to hide their first crime and to keep the funeral home in business, find Oliver and Roberta falling in love and participating in a series of "accidental" deaths.
This film contains examples of:
- Accidental Murder: Oliver fatally hitting Armin Imholz with his truck. At least, that's what Roberta wants him to believe.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Roberta ends up with everything she wanted: her father dead and ownership of the funeral home.
- Batman Gambit: Every murder (and reaction to it) was anticipated by Roberta.
- Blood-Splattered Wedding Dress: After her wedding, Roberta chases Oliver through the funeral home with a bone saw while wearing her wedding dress with blood down the front of it.
- Chekhov's Gun: Armin Imholz' walking stick and the bloody hankerchief with Mr. Pickles and Oliver's blood on it.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The secretary/groundskeeper/accountant.
- Chekhov's Skill: Roberta's position as town mortician/coroner/corpse dresser is what allows them to make so many of the pair's kills look like accidents.
- Coming and Going: The montage of the now-booming business coming into the funeral home is intersped with cuts of Roberta and Oliver making rather...interesting uses of the funeral parlor facilities.
- Cradling Your Kill: Roberta to Oliver after she kissed him with a mouthful of peanuts and triggered his peanut allergy.
- Death by Looking Up: Roberta's father, courtesy of Oliver and a minivan suspended by a junkyard magnet.
- Death by Falling Over: Pickles, who trips while trying to grab Oliver and falls the handle of the vise on his workbench impales his eye socket.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Roberta murders (or coerces Oliver into murdering) no less than 7 people- including Oliver himself, all because she felt the funeral home belonged to her after the death and years of faithful service of her mother.
- Divorce Requires Death: Roberta to Oliver; she was never in love with him, anyway.
- Dying Declaration of Love: Oliver to Roberta. note
- Eye Scream: Pickles suffers Death by Falling Over when he trips while trying to grab Oliver and falls face first on to his workbench: impaling his eye socket on the handle of his vise. Oliver and Roberta cover this up by jamming his spyglass into the socket and making it look like he fell out of his treehouse.
- Family Business: The funeral parlor becomes one for Oliver though Roberta believes it should be hers.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: Pickles certainly seems to think so...about his
teenage neighbor and her girlfriend. - Naughty Birdwatching: Pickles sits in a treehouse with a spyglass spying on his teenage neighbour and her girlfriend.
- Nosebleed: Oliver gets them frequently throughout the movie; though it's established this is due more towards nervousness/fear than arousal.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Pickles, right through the eye.
- Karma Houdini: Roberta who commits, or is an accomplice to, seven murders and then murders her partner-in-crime/husband and ends up with everything she wanted.
- The Killer Becomes the Killed: Oliver who is murdered by Roberta after he has killed her father for her.
- Kiss of Death: Roberta kisses Oliver with a moutful of peanuts, thereby trigger his fatal peanut allergy.
- Leave No Witnesses: Oliver and Roberta's modus operandi. Anyone who uncovers their scheme becomes the next to suffer a fatal 'accident'.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Roberta's specialty. It helps that she is also the local coroner and gets to determine what cause of death is.
- Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Roberta is far more assertive and physical than Oliver.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Oliver slips more and more into this mindset whenever another obstacle arises. Roberta always had it.
- Parental Incest: Oliver starts shtupping his stepmother on the side. To be fair, he'd never even met her until after became she became his ex-stepmother.
- Plot-Triggering Death: When Oliver Whynacht and his brother Jackie return home for their estranged father's funeral, Oliver is surprised to find out that he has inherited his father's estate which includes a funeral home.
- Self-Induced Allergic Reaction: Oliver allows Roberta to kiss him with a mouthful of peanutsnote , knowing he has an Epipen in his pocket or so he thinks.
- Serial Killer: Oliver and Roberta both end up becoming this.
- Smug Snake: Wallace Snarr, owner and operator of the rival funeral parlor poaching all their business.
- Shotgun Wedding: Oliver and Roberta have one. The baby might not even be his.
- Shout-Out: To The Empire Strikes Back:
- Oliver: I love you.
Roberta: I know.
- Trophy Wife: Oliver's ex-stepmother.
- Unexpected Inheritance: Grocery delivery boy Oliver never dreamed he'd receive 100% of his estranged father's possesssions and failing business. Neither did Roberta.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Oliver starts out as your typical gawky, self-effacing Jay Baruchel role...
- Villain Protagonist: Two, at that. Oliver and Roberta start murdering locals to drum up business for their failing funeral home.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Roberta murders Oliver after he has killed her father for her.
