Here’s a drinking game for all you kids looking to get loaded in a big hurry tonight. Head over to Rotten Tomatoes, start reading reviews of Buried and every time someone uses the word “claustrophobic,” take a shot. See, I got you started with one right there. While you’re at it, take one for every review that mentions “Hitchcock,” too.

Those references are going to be ubiquitous in said reviews because director Rodrigo Cortés’ film seems expressly designed to act as a panic trigger for anyone with a fear of tight spaces. He’s also unafraid to call out his primary influence. From the very first frame, Cortés begins referencing Hitch, with a Bernard Hermann-esque score accompanying a 60s-style animated credits sequence. Then, the screen cuts to silent blackness long enough that you may wonder if something’s gone wrong in the projection room.

Soon, though, you hear the sound of breathing, and the film is off and running with a conceit so simple, it seems impossible that it could actually work. Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) is a truck driver working as a contractor in Iraq. His convoy is attacked, he’s knocked out, and that breathing you hear is his: he has just awoken in a coffin, nailed shut and buried in the hot sand. For the next 90 minutes, every frame of the film occurs within the confines of that simple wooden box, the only light the flame of his Zippo lighter, the glow of a BlackBerry that was buried with him, and, later, eerie green illumination from a pair of glowsticks that he finds stashed at his feet.