20 Best Movies About Being Trapped In A Room Update 04/2024

Movies About Being Trapped In A Room

To make the most of our additional time indoors, why not treat ourselves to a few movies? There are a lot of great movies out there, but these 20 may be more relevant to you right now. They all deal with being trapped in a house. According to the song “Who Can Relate?” by Logic, “Who can understand?” In short, everyone.

Even if things may appear dire at the moment, these films have the potential to lift our spirits. Aside from alligators, we don’t have to worry about being confined to a room full of ghouls and other supernatural creatures. No matter how you look at it, it all comes down to perspective. Milo Ventimiglia, Dylan Minnette, Brie Larson, and many more of our favorite actors star in these films.

Horror films are known for frequently employing the “stuck in a house” trope. One approach to increase the suspense in a film is to have the characters trapped with the thing they’re attempting to escape. There are a few horror flicks on this list, but not all of them are. Murder mysteries set in intriguing mansions and classic thrillers involving people-watching via home windows round out the offerings at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

For film makers, keeping people in a home has another advantage: it only requires one set. The cost of making a movie can quickly spiral out of control, and having various locations merely adds to that. Thanks to its one-house set, Paranormal Activity, one of the films on this list, cost under $15,000 to make. As a result, it turned a tidy profit of about $200 million at the box office.

Check out these 20 terrible movies about being trapped now, whether you’re seeking for inspiration or just a way to feel better about your own position.

1. Room

Room

After being kidnapped and trapped in a storage shed as a teenager, Room relates the narrative of the girl’s ordeal. Over the course of several years, she eventually gives birth to and raises a child. To keep her son from realizing how much he’s losing out on, his mother tells him that everything he sees on TV is a lie and that the entire world is nothing more than their modest apartment.

2. The Divide

A nuclear assault compels nine strangers to shelter in their New York City apartment building’s basement, including Gilmore Girls star Milo Ventimiglia. They are stranded and unable to return to the surface, so they must ration their resources and keep their tempers in check. If they don’t stop turning on one another, the real danger may not even be the radioactive fallout.

3. Rear Window

It’s all about a photographer’s camera in this Alfred Hitchcock flick. starring Jimmy Stewart, Jeff is unable to leave his flat due to a broken leg and spends his days peering out the windows of his neighbors’ homes with a long lens camera. He thinks he saw a murder while people-watching. He may soon find himself in peril as a result of his findings.

4. Clue

Clue

Now that we’re spending more time at home, does anyone else find themselves pulling out the board game Clue? Check out the film adaptation as well. A dinner party at a mansion, which quickly evolves into a murder mystery, brings together all of the game’s participants. In this case, everyone is a suspect, and the audience has a good time trying to figure out who to believe.

5. Panic Room

The cramped quarters of most of our homes and flats are nothing compared to what Jodie Foster and a young Kristen Stewart endured when their New York City apartment was broken into and they were forced to hide in a panic room. However, what was intended to keep the intruders out of the panic room where Meg and her daughter are sheltering may prove to be their downfall. At this point, having a little more space is just what we need.

6. Paranormal Activity

The haunted house in Paranormal Activity is made even more eerie by the film’s use of discovered video. It’s as if we’re watching a true story unfold before our eyes, only this is a documentary. Is it possible that witnessing this right now will make us feel better about the state of our own lives? As it turns out, the situation might be far worse.

7. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane

Bette Davis and Joan Crawford play sisters who live in a decaying mansion in this classic thriller. Blanche is confined to a wheelchair due to prior injuries she sustained in an accident. Meanwhile, Jane, her primary carer, is hatching a scheme to permanently eliminate her sister in order to recover the renown she once enjoyed as a youngster.

8. House on Haunted Hill (1999)

Several people leap at the chance to make some quick money when an eccentric rich man promises strangers a million dollars merely to remain in an abandoned building for the night. It turns out, however, that the building is haunted and soon everyone, including the millionaire and his wife, is on edge. Let the million bucks fade into insignificance compared to just getting it out of bed in the morning.

9. Night of the Living Dead(1990)

A tiny group of human survivors barricades themselves in a farmhouse to flee a zombie apocalypse. In other cases, the greatest threat isn’t what’s outside, as in The Divide. The tensions in the house increase as the zombies approach. They all have different views about how to get out, and it may be their acrimonious demeanor rather than the zombies that proves fatal.

10. Saw II

Saw II

Eight people are stranded in an abandoned house in this sequel to the popular horror film and are about to be subjected to Jigsaw’s cruel torment. Only Detective Eric Matthews, whose son is one of the eight people stranded in the house, stands in their way of escaping. The house is stocked with deadly nerve gas, which could quickly incapacitate the captives. When they’re trying to flee, every second counts.

11. Quarantine

Celebrity actress Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter) stars in this aptly titled film. A reporter becomes stuck in an apartment complex in Los Angeles while working on a story. A threat from within may be lurking, she learns as the CDC locks the doors and windows of the building. It doesn’t take long for her concerns to be confirmed as a raving elderly woman attacks them out of nowhere.

12. The Strangers

A holiday property booked by a couple quickly turns into their worst nightmare. Attempts are made to torture the couple by three disguised intruders who break into their house. The director was inspired to make this film by the true story of the Sharon Tate Manson Family murders because he had always wondered what it would have been like for Sharon and her guests to be attacked and not know who or why they were being attacked.

13. Wolves at the Door

Wolves at the Door

This film is also based on the Manson family’s murder of Sharon Tate, another prominent member of the cult. Two couples plan an elegant farewell party in their posh home, but Charles Manson’s followers soon torment and kill them for no apparent reason. It’s one of the most heinous crimes in recent memory and a deadly case of mistaken identity.

14. Silent House

It was in this film that Elizabeth Olsen, the younger of the Olsen twins, got her acting career off to a flying start. She portrays Sarah, a young woman who is helping her father and uncle with the renovation of an ancient house. But when she’s stranded in the house with no electricity and her family is nowhere to be found, she panics. Apocalyptic forces begin to encircle her as she is unable to communicate with anybody on the outside.

15. Murder by Death

Even though this film was released in 1976, it still has a lot to offer today, especially in terms of its subject matter. Five investigators are summoned to a castle dinner party to solve a murder mystery. A million dollars will be awarded to the person who solves the allegedly intractable case. They begin to fear that they have been lured to their doom in this mystery palace when another person dies.

16. Escape Room(2019)

Escape Room(2019)

Wouldn’t it be nice to go out of the house right now?? At least the rooms in this film aren’t as spooky as ours. The story revolves around a group of strangers who enter a $10,000-a-piece escape room competition. Within a few minutes of setting out on their journey, it becomes clear that the puzzles they must solve in each room of the mansion are a matter of life and death.

17. Crawl

To put it another way, it’s the Sharknado of alligator films. Haley tries to rescue her father from his home during a category 5 hurricane. However, as the water level rises, she finds herself trapped in her home with an even more terrifying threat: alligators. This means that Haley could get eaten while she’s trying to save her father from a hurricane, a flooding river, being trapped, and rescuing him.

The absence of alligators is a welcome relief.

18. Don’t Breathe

The 13 Reasons Why actor Dylan Minnette appears in this slasher flick. Those familiar with the show will recognize him. The film follows a bunch of teenagers who intend to break into a blind man’s house because they believe it will be an easy target. A quick examination reveals his cunning and cunning methods, and they quickly come to understand that they’ve been the ones waiting for someone to make a mistake in order to capture and torture them. To avoid being the next victim, they’ll need to use everything they’ve got to get out of the house alive.

19. Hidden

Hidden

In a disaster thriller/horror film, Big Little Lies actor Alexander Skarsgrd appears. They’re trying to keep their family safe from an epidemic that’s spread to the surface, so they’ve taken refuge in an underground shelter. A dangerous peril could be unleashed on the family if they reveal their location to the outside world by accident. Sometimes, even the safest places in horror films are not so safe.

20. Sheltered

In this film, a vacation goes horribly wrong. In the event of a severe storm, a local bartender offers to house a group of tourists. But when they discover that one of them is a murderer, and the storm outside continues to roar, they are trapped within the house, fighting for their lives with nowhere to run. What’s going on? Having a vacation in our own houses is made all the more appealing by these movie plots.