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Mind-Blowing Movies Entirely Set in a Single Location to Unlock Your Claustrophobia

Mind-Blowing Movies Entirely Set in a Single Location to Unlock Your Claustrophobia January 18, 2019

movies set in one location

Sometimes, simpler is better. Some movies might jump around the world, throwing distractions at you. But other movies dig their heels into one place, and tell you a compelling story without ever leaving. So do you feel like changing things up? Check out these gnarly movies set in one location. 

Escape Room

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Thrillist
Ever done an escape room? Those sorta-cheesy attractions where a group of folks work together to solve clues and get out of a location? What if one of these escape rooms was actively trying to kill its participants? Would that intrigue you? Then you better check out Escape Room. If you can escape this list, that is.

Snowpiercer

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: USA Today
[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] In between some of his Captain America obligations, Chris Evans took some time to star in Snowpiercer, a buckwild dystopian sci-fi film set entirely on a moving train. It has inventive action sequences, wild scenery-chewing performances, and a food-related twist that puts Soylent Green to shame.

Saw

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Bloody Disgusting
Saw changed the game. Every horror film since then owes it a debt. And yet, for all its influence, the original is strikingly simple. Three men, one dead, stuck in a bathroom. Can they get out? And who put them there? See if you can keep up with this fun, grisly potboiler's twists and turns.

Panic Room

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Empire
Let's be honest: If a sweaty, cornrows-sporting Jared Leto made it into our house, we'd lock ourselves in a panic room, too. That's the exact situation Jodie Foster and a young Kristen Stewart find themselves in, as director David Fincher flings a group of robbers played by the best character actors at them.

Phone Booth

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: The Mad Movie Man
[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] Colin Farrell is a cheating jerk in a phone booth. Kiefer Sutherland is a psychopath with a gun trained at Farrell's head. And... that's it. Sound ludicrous? It is! And yet the film's sheer commitment, combined with its gritty filmmaking techniques, make its calls connect.

Hard Candy

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: RVWR dot Org
Patrick Wilson plays a pedophile. Ellen Page plays a would-be target ready to exact revenge. And Hard Candy plays its audience, flipping the script on power dynamics in many disquieting ways. It'll torture you psychologically as much as Page tortures Wilson physically.

10 Cloverfield Lane

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Bloody Disgusting
After Cloverfield, the expansive found-footage monster nightmare, it would make sense that a sequel... is a tense chamber play set in one location where there might not even be monsters? 10 Cloverfield Lane was a huge gamble that paid off, with John Goodman's firey performance proving that humans are the greatest monster of all.

Grand Piano

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: YouTube
[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] Elijah Wood is a master pianist giving a concert. John Cusack is a psychopath with a gun trained at Wood's head. And... that's it. Sound ludicrous? It is! And yet the film's sheer commitment, combined with its luxurious filmmaking techniques, make it sing.

The Thing

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: slash film
Stuck in an Arctic outpost, a bunch of grizzled men (headlined by a bearded Kurt Russell) must figure out who among them is the titular Thing. This Thing possesses people before revealing itself, and the John Carpenter-directed film revels in insane practical effects and gore.

The Silent House

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Cineplex.com
Coming at us from Uruguay, The Silent House (or La Casa Muda) presents itself as one unbroken, feature length shot. In these lack of edits, we experience every agonizing scare alongside the heroine, Laura. It's a remarkable feat of low budget ingenuity -- the film was shot over just four days, using a consumer-quality Canon camera. Do us a favor and skip slick the American remake.

The Raid: Redemption

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Vulture
[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] The plot summary is simple: A bunch of bad guys are in a house, and some good guys have to enter the house and beat all the bad guys up. Got it? Good. Now you can enjoy The Raid: Redemption as the unpretentious slice of action carnage it was destined to be. No CGI necessary.

The Invitation

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Maxim
You may have been to some awkward dinner parties. But never like one in The Invitation, a pitch-perfect slow-burn psychological horror flick. It's like watching a car crash in slow motion -- once you figure out what's actually going on, you won't be able to look away.

Buried

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Buried Trailer
The only actor you see in this film is Ryan Reynolds. And he carries it effortlessly, ditching his Deadpool snark to play an earnestly terrified character. The whole movie takes place in a dang coffin, and it is a marvel to watch Reynolds' character try and figure his way out of it. The ending will leave you shell-shocked.

The Evil Dead

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Filmic
[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] In 1981, director Sam Raimi took a group of friends to a secluded cabin in Michigan, and changed film history. Their final product, The Evil Dead, still has the power to melt your brain with its carnage, sense of humor, and filmmaking chops. If you're familiar with the other titles in the Evil Dead canon, but have never seen the original, you owe it to yourself.

The Disappearance Of Alice Creed

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Empire
This one's not for the faint of heart. With painstaking, excruciating detail, we watch two small-time crooks kidnap the title character, Alice Creed, and eventually descend into madness. Lead actor Gemma Arterton insisted on being handcuffed even when she wasn't filming, and that level of authenticity carries throughout.

REC

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Found Footage Critic
Do you have a friend who's all like, "Found footage movies suck"? Show them REC, the 2007 horror flick from Spain about news reporters investigating a strange apartment building, and see if they can even make coherent sentences after. This film is a white-knuckle thrill ride, with jarring images and jump scares around every corner.

Pontypool

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Bloody Disgusting
[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] What if a zombie virus was spread through words? That's the genius pitch at the center of Pontypool, a low budget work of genre genius from Canada. Sticking us in a shock-jock DJ's booth, we lose our grip on sanity right alongside the characters, who get stuck on words and phrases both violent and nonsensical before giving in to the virus.

Nightingale

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Go Into The Story - The Black List
The only actor in this film is David Oyelowo. And he carries it effortlessly, even as his character's true intentions reveal themselves to be more and more disturbing. In a series of video diaries, Peter Snowden admits guilt to a heinous crime, and attempts to explain himself. A remarkable, underrated movie.

Lebanon

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: SAMI NAIK
Lots of films make grand statements to show the horrors of war. Lebanon goes smaller, containing all of the action to the inside of a tank. The soldiers, tasked with an impossibly grim mission, succumb to the pressures of violence, fighting with each other as well as the so-called "enemy".

Exam

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Mubi
[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] A dystopian future. A virus is ravaging the world. A group of British candidates are brought in to take an exam for a potential job fighting the virus. Everything goes horribly, horribly wrong. Playing like a Twilight Zone episode on steroids, Exam has a polarizing twist -- you'll either absolutely love it or detest it more than the dang virus.

Cube

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Bloody Good Horror
This low-budget Canadian shocker ticks all the boxes. It's cerebral yet visceral, melodramatic yet understated, easy to follow yet enigmatic. It's Cube, the story of a group of strangers trying to escape a, you know, cube. Each cube they find has a different series of traps to escape. Who will make it? You'll have to watch to find out.

Compliance

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: LetterBoxd
What's more icky: The premise of Compliance, in which a fast food manager makes her employee do all kinds of horrible things based on a voice on a phone she's never met in real life? Or the fact that it's all based on true story? Human nature is laid to its barest impulses in this terrifying film.

1408

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: Film School Rejects
[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] Did you love It? Then you should check out some of the back catalog of Stephen King adaptations, especially 1408. John Cusack plays a paranormal debunker who stays at a supposedly haunted hotel. We don't think it's a spoiler to say that Cusack is wrong about this particular hotel.

13 Tzameti

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: A Beast In A Jungle
No color. No famous actors. No justifications. Just a grimy slice of Georgian horror (Georgia like the country, not the state). 13 Tzameti features a group of desperate souls playing a terrifying variation of Russian roulette. You'll need a long shower after this piece of work.

Locke

movies set in one location
IMAGE BY: The Movie My Life
The only actor you see in this film is Tom Hardy. And he carries it effortlessly, assisted by a murderer's row of British talent on speakerphone. The titular character is stuck in a car the entire movie's running time. And as he deals with the ever-creeping difficulties of his situations, we're right in his face every step of the way.