Buried

Joe Hazlitt, the Sheriff of Chambers, a small town in Southern Ohio, arrives at the scene of a roadside memorial cross, where a news hungry reporter is interviewing Dina, the mother of a girl who died in a single car accident a few months earlier. Dina is convinced that her daughter Mistie was actually murdered, and that Joe is covering up evidence. We then flash back to the night of the accident, when Joe and his over-eager deputy Richie discover a body by the side of the road. Both of them recognize Mistie, a popular cheerleader who just graduated high school. It is Joe who must break the news of Mistie’s death to her mother, Dina. Dina is convinced that Mistie was killed by a drunk driver, but Joe tells her that all evidence points to it being an accident. Prevailing on their long friendship, Dina begs Joe to investigate further. Over the course of the investigation of the accident scene, Joe appears to have made a realization when he examines the car Mistie was driving. Whatever he has discovered shocks him to the core, but he doesn’t share his findings with Richie. Instead, he removes something from the trunk of the accident vehicle and hides it in his own car. Meanwhile, Richie grows increasingly suspicious of Joe’s actions. Frustrated when Joe announces Mistie’s death was an accident, Dina puts up a large cross at the side of the highway, and takes to social media in an attempt to bring attention to her cause. Eventually, she attracts the interest of a shark-like investigational newswoman, Elise Hopewell, who takes up the fight. The publicity-hungry Richie contributes his suspicions, and poor Joe finds himself in the center of a media storm. Even with microphones thrust into his face, Joe continues to deny that Mistie’s death was anything but an accident. He drives away from Dina and the newswoman, resolute in his silence. As he drives away, we flash back again, to a week before the accident, a day when Joe encountered Dina in a parking lot and helped her with a flat tire. Joe switches out the flat with Dina’s spare, noting that the spare tire is in terrible shape. He advises her to buy a new tire immediately, as the spare is not safe to take onto the highway. But having just purchased an expensive dress for Mistie’s graduation, Dina cannot afford to replace the tire. Furthermore, she’s too proud to accept a loan from Joe. Returning to the present, Joe drives to the city dump, where he opens his trunk and removes what he had taken out of Dina’s wrecked car: the flat tire he had changed the week before Mistie’s accident. He throws the tire onto a mound of other tires, forever hiding from Dina the fact that it was her own negligence in replacing the spare tire that led to her daughter’s fatal crash.