Tapping into the same love of “science” that lead Discovery to try to feed a man to a snake last year, A&E has announced that it’s going to bury some people alive and see how they react. (As all “scientific” experiments require a testable hypothesis, here’s one the network can have for free: They will not like it very much.)
Titled Fear: Buried Alive, the show will air on October 26 and feature three experimental subjects, all of whom will be placed in “underground coffins” and subjected to “a series of escalating horrors designed to test the strength of their psyches.” The show is being pitched as a form of immersion therapy, on the theory that being trapped and immobilized in an airtight box will finally free people of their irrational phobias of being buried, aware and screaming, in their own untimely graves. A&E has assured future viewers that all of the subjects will be scientifically monitored, and that every possible precaution—outside of not burying people alive as part of a Halloween TV stunt—has been taken for the show.
Not wanting to leave viewers out of the claustrophobic fun, the Buried Alive producers have also hired The Green Inferno director Eli Roth to show up and talk about “how he creates fear.” Psychologists agree that being forced to listen to Roth recount the making of Cabin Fever and wax nostalgic about the set of Inglourious Basterds is the talking-head equivalent of being pinned beneath six feet of hard earth in a thin-walled box of death.