Filmmakers like to take advantage of the big screen’s ability to ”open up” a story and present wide, sweeping vistas. Seldom does a movie take the opposite approach and present a story, like Flightplan’s airborne thriller plot, that takes place in as limited a space as possible. Flightplan’s release today inspired me to wonder: what are the best claustrophobia movies, films where much of the action takes place in a confined space? Here are the ones I came up with:
1) The Vanishing (director George Sluizer’s original 1988 Dutch version, not his inferior American remake) A great chiller, with one of the creepiest, most disturbing endings of all time.
2) A Taste of Cherry Abbas Kiarostami’s masterpiece takes place entirely inside a taxi, as a Tehran cabbie tries to persuade various passengers to help him violate Islamic taboo and commit suicide. Not depressing at all, though; it’s a movie that actually affirms a belief in life and art.
3) Das Boot Best. Submarine. Movie. Ever.
4) The Lady Vanishes Hitchcock’s classic is the obvious inspiration for Flightplan’s missing-child plot, except it takes place on a moving train.
5) Papillon Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, imprisoned on Devil’s Island. A must.
6) Lifeboat Lesser-known Hitchcock but similarly compelling. Nine people from various walks of life struggling to survive in a tiny craft. Someday, Mark Burnett will remake it as a reality show.
7) The Pit and the Pendulum No one does claustrophobia like Edgar Allan Poe, and no one does Poe like Roger Corman and Vincent Price.
Panic Room After this movie, you’d think Jodie Foster would have gotten the whole fighting-for-my-daughter’s-life-in-a-tight-space thing out of her system. Guess not.
Any of your favorites that I missed?
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What about Germany’s “Das Experiment” starring Moritz Bleibtreu (better known as Manni in “Run Lola Run”)? Most of the movie is done in a super creepy faux prison. Moritz was trapped in a box!!!
Roman Polanski absolutely needs to be on this list — two of his films could be considered the most claustrophobic ever: Repulsion and The Tenant.
How about Cube? A bunch of people trapped in 25×25x25 death trap? Sounds like a great vacation to me.
The Uma-is-Buried-Alive scene of Kill Bill 2 was the most claustrophobic moment of my life.
Sleuth with Michael Caine and Sir Laurence Olivier. Itr was based on a play that took place in one room. Trust me, it played better on stage.
You can add Phone Booth to the list. Oh and the scene in Waterworld where Costner is locked in the cage. Oh and the scene in Willow where Kilmer is locked in the cage. Oh and the scene in Greystoke where… well you get the idea.
It isn’t a horror movie or thriller, but 12 ANGRY MEN is pretty claustrophobic. As for more recent movies, I would also add RED EYE.
Marooned with Gene Hackman, James Franciscus and David Janssen. Three astronauts trapped on board a space capsule waiting for rescue. Just remembered another one, Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks.
What about No Highway in the Sky with James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich, or The Collector with Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar?
Uh…
Rope?
Rear Window?
Wait Until Dark?
Copycat?
12 Angry Men?
Definitely Rear Window gets my vote.
“Dead Calm” and “Visitors” are both stranded sailboat movies out of Australia;
“Diary of Anne Frank,” with two families in an attic;
“Below” is a good submarine ghost story;
“My Little Eye” has six doomed reality contestants staying in a webcam-festooned farmhouse;
“The Serpent and the Rainbow” has two nicely creepy buried-alive scenes;
“The Hole,” where four British prep-schoolers get locked in a WWII bunker;
But the most claustrophobic of all has to be Uma Thurman, Ethan Hawke, and Robert Sean Leonard in “Tape,” which takes place entirely in one cheap hotel room.
The MOST claustrophobic movie I ever saw was Glengarry, Glen Ross. 4 guys in one room discussing who sold the most real estate…..
The first “Die Hard”. Doesn’t get too much more claustrophobic than Bruce Willis crawling through the ventilation ducts. “Now I know what a TV dinner feels like”, indeed!
How about Saw? Most of that movie took place in one room.
One word: Jaws
Alien
Seven – claustrophobic in a metaphoric sense. They cannot escape the brutality of the city and John Doe
Hamlet – Ethan Hawke, 2000. All Hamlet’s are claustrophobic as Hamlet is truly entombed by the Ghost at the beginning, but this one is particularly so as the director shoots up from the ground, and you get shots of faces trapped beneath large buildings in NYC
The shining
being john malkovich
The end of “Contact” with Jodie Foster in the pod is really claustrophobic.
Has to be “The Descent”. People going through caves in small holes and getting stuck……
Das Boot wasn’t really about submarines, it was about the U-Boat from WWII
Clandestins (1997), En la Cama, Abwärts