, the characters are confined in a torture maze where they must use logic to escape)
Tight spaces, dark corners, and 20,000 leagues under the sea – prepare yourself for paranoia with these stiflingly freaky thrillers
This Friday sees the release of Black Sea, a submarine quest to find gold buried on an abandoned Nazi U-Boat. Directed by The Last King of Scotland’s (2006) Kevin McDonagh, watching this film is an endurance test for anyone of a nervous disposition around small spaces – and it’s not the first flick to trade on a fear of confinement. From The Shining (1980) to Saw (2004) danger in near proximity is twice as nice. In space movies like Gravity (2013) or Alien (1979), isolation and the limited space of vessels have long captured people’s imagination. Alfred Hitchcock, be it with Lifeboat (1944) or Psycho (1960), was famously scariest when most self-limiting. Here, we round up terrors of the all-too-close kind that really freaked us out.
BLACK SEA (2014)
What's it about?
Laid off from work, the tough-looking Captain Robinson (Jude Law) is offered a job with the promise of $185 million in booty. Setting sail with a motley crew of Russians and English-speakers, the masterful cast including Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, David Threlfall, Konstantin Khabenskiy and Sergey Puskepalis.
Why does it make us feel claustrophobic?
Inspired by the Kursk disaster in 2000, where 118 sailors perished on the sea bed, the dank, clanky confines of the vessel make for tight-chested viewing. In the tradition of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), it doesn’t take long for the crew to work out that the booty will go much further the fewer hands waiting to grab it.
PANIC ROOM (2002)
What's it about?
In David Fincher’s Panic Room, divorcee Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) takes a New York townhouse that boasts a panic room, only to have intruders break in on the very first night. She flees to the mini-fortress with teenage daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart), only to find the robbers want something inside.
Why does it make us feel claustrophic?
Fincher turns the nightmare in on itself. The family’s fortress becomes a prison, playing into post-industrial complexes that the manmade world will be the death of us all. In one scene, they flash a torch as a signal to a neighbour, only to watch him pull down the blind to block out the nuisance. This film taps into concerns over intruders, isolation, as well as a fear of small spaces and being in a confined space with Kristen Stewart.
BURIED (2010)
What it's about?
Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010, Buried finds truck driver Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) waking up in a bona fide coffin. Memories return of having been attacked by terrorists, his colleagues dead. He phones for help via his mobile, but the terrorists call to negotiate a ransom and things descend into a cat-and-mouse game while the finite supply of oxygen slips away.
Why does it make us feel claustrophic?
No Kill Bill-style escape here – the entire film is set in the coffin, with various angles of a sweaty faced Reynolds fighting for his life. As the sand starts pouring in around him, the chances of survival thin like a real-time hourglass. His attempts to call loved ones as the power dwindles set off our very real anxieties about being somewhere with an exhausted mobile battery.
HARD CANDY (2005)
What it's about?
A geeky loner (Patrick Wilson) meets a cherub-faced girl (Ellen Page) online, luring her back to his place which is littered with pictures of young girls. Only this girl has other ideas – she drugs him and ties him up, before torturing him for crimes against society. The ultimate revenge porn for paedophile slayers, or a comment on the ambiguous nature of online chatrooms, it’s creepy either way.
Why does it make us feel claustrophic?
This film really gave us the willies when the drama became confined to Jeff’s isolated property. Resembling some juvenile spawn of Sigourney Weaver in Alien, the crop-haired, tank top-wearing Hayley sets about a punishment so gruesome it will illicit some hurried leg-crossing from any viewer.
DAS BOOT (1981)
What's it about?
Das Boot is a seminal war movie set on a German U-boat in 1942 during the Battle of the Atlantic. A hit in West Germany where it was first released, this tale of misery, boredom and terror at the ocean’s depths remains a powerful anti-war message, from its opening note that 40,000 men went out on such boats and 30,000 never returned.
Why does it make us feel claustrophic?
The U-boat is cramped, filthy and tedious, save for intense battles in which the leaking, creaking hulk feels more like ready-made sarcophagus than a fighting war machine. Glimpses of the outside – a raucous, gaudy party in La Rochelle, Nazi officers enjoying yacht life in a Spanish resort, confirms the worst truth of all – that the ideology they serve is corrupt to the point of insanity.
GASLIGHT (1944)
What it's about?
Gaslight is regarded as one of the first purely psychological thrillers. When a rich opera singer is murdered, it is presumed the thief was after her prize rubies, but the jewels were never located. Her niece Paula (Ingmar Bergman) moves in with her new husband but is plagued by forgetfulness giving way to paranoia – for which her husband lovingly prescribes isolation.
Why does it make us claustrophobic?
Charles Boyer’s spiderlike Gregory Anton spins a web of suffocating love around his bride holed up in the antiquated mansion. Weaving anew the Victorian tale of madwoman in the attic, in this version the audience are drawn into Paula’s paranoia, asking if she really is – or if we too – are going mad?
THE DESCENT (2005)
What's it about?
This British B-movie pits a group of girls against a caving expedition. A downward climb in high spirits begins this ill-fated trip in which the only way out is down, through a series of pools and chambers, moist with sexual subtext, and populated by weird pre-evolutionary zombie-like creatures.
Why does it make us feel claustrophic?
Long before the grisly fate of the girls emerges dripping from the darkness, the close proximity of the setting gives the feeling of being well and truly trapped. Watching the girls shuffle and squeeze through barely-there gaps will set teeth on edge. A stifling nightmare somewhere between The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and Carrie (1976).
CUBE (1997)
What's it about?
Directed by Vincenzo Natali, this beautifully conceptual film presents a pre-millennial dystopia in which a group of strangers crawl between cube-like rooms that may or may not contain sudden death. A forerunner to the Saw and The Matrix legacies which soon followed.
Why does it make us feel claustrophic?
Confines the character into a torture chamber maze where they must use logic to escape, it's a physical rendition of the psychological thriller. An escape artist using a practical approach is burned in the face with acid, but a Maths student and autistic savant are better equipped for the task – if the infectious madness doesn’t get them first.
FANTASTIC VOYAGE (1966)
What's it about?
To save a diplomat from a stroke, a team of scientists are shrunk in a nuclear submarine and injected into his body to free the clot before the effects of the miniaturization wear off. Two years in production, this was a big budget blow out in its day.
Why is it so claustrophobic?
Not a claustrophobic movie in the usual sense, as the team’s journey through veins and floods of mucus looks more like an astronaut escapade. Yet the basic premise of sticking one person inside another, invasive dangers and asphyxiating climate of the Cold War playing backdrop, it explores claustrophobia with the daring of the Space Age.
THE HOLE (2001)
What's it about?
Liz (Thora Birch) plots a party with three more popular kids in an abandoned bomb shelter near their boarding school. When the school nerd Martyn doesn’t return to release them, food, light and sanity soon prove to be in short supply.
Why is it so claustrophobic?
Trapped underground in the bluff and anxiety of high school politics is a grim proposition. Even on a second or third watch, it’s hard to know what’s going on, with confusing scenes of violence in the half-darkness. Told as a series of flashbacks, we cannot trust narrator Liz, who is attempting to lure Matt (Desmond Harrington) from girlfriend Frankie (Kiera Knightley) with horrifying consequences.