This week, Devil opens in theaters across America and gives us a reason to avoid the elevators and opt for the stairs. Despite the fact that the scariest part of the trailer may be M. Night Shyamalan's name attached, I am very much looking forward to Devil. The idea of a group of people trapped in an elevator with an incognito Satan is both intriguing and calls to mind one of my favorite cinematic traditions: the close-quarters horror film. I have compiled a list of films that take the scope and scale of your darkest nightmares and scale it down to a setting that is as claustrophobic and asphyxiating as the terror itself. Let's start with the roomiest of tight spaces and slowly let the walls close in on you.
100 Feet
The largest of confining horror locales on this list lies in the film 100 Feet. It is about a woman who kills her husband after enduring years of violent abuse at his hands. After serving part of her sentence behind bars, she is released under house arrest, her ankle bracelet not allowing her to be more than 100 feet from the center of her living room. If she sets off the alarm even one time, she will return to prison for the rest of her life. The horror element comes in when the ghost of her slain husband returns and continues the spousal abuse from beyond the grave. What makes this movie so fascinating is the constant inner conflict of the semi-incarcerated wife torn between not wanting to return to prison and not wanting to take paranormal beatings from her ex-ex-husband. Even though she has an entire house to work with, when a slaphappy ghost is in every room, it can get pretty crowded
Saw
I am a fan of the first Saw not for the cat-and-mouse game between Jigsaw and the detectives or the more elaborately constructed traps, but for the bare-bones core story of two guys who wake up in a room with their legs chained to various fixtures and are trying to figure out where they are and how they are going to get out. The premise at the heart of this movie could not be more simplistic if it tried, and that's probably because it was a wholesale ripoff of a five-minute scene in Mad Max, in which Max cuffs a man's ankle to a burning car and offers him the chance to cut through his foot before it explodes. That room itself is none too spacious, so being confined within it to the length of your chain is even further constricting.
Frozen
From director Adam Green, Frozen is the story of three friends who take one run too many on the ski slopes and end up suspended in a chairlift with no one around to help them. I'm a huge fan of Frozen, and that's saying something considering that I detest both Hatchet and Spiral (Green's first films). Again, what we have here is a frightfully simple concept that really shines in its execution. Green opts for an authentic survival story over a more supernatural terror and drops his characters into a hopeless situation that becomes both relatable and thusly far more chilling. Say what you will about the fact that they are technically outdoors, but when leaving the confines of that chairlift means falling to your death, you are officially stuck.
Buried
I will fully admit that this is a film I haven't yet seen, but it has been selected to play at Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX, so that will soon be rectified. But one need merely scan the plot synopsis to understand why Buried finds adequate purchase on this close-quarters horror list. A truck driver in Iraq has his convoy attacked and wakes up buried alive in a coffin with only a lighter, a cell phone, and 90 minutes of air (effectively promising the film will be at least somewhat in real time). One of my greatest fears -- and I feel this is somewhat universal -- is being buried alive, and I look forward to squirming uncomfortably in my seat as yet another simple film conceit examines this fear in the smallest of spaces.
The Cell
In order to save a kidnapping victim, an FBI agent must go inside the mind of the serial killer who nabbed her ... who's currently in a coma. Despite the fact that this is yet another instance of Hollywood being erroneously convinced of Jennifer Lopez's abilities as an actress, The Cell is a very unique film. It was directed by Tarsem Singh, whose visuals are always jaw dropping and beautiful even if the narrative or performances fall flat. So why have I included this one on the list of steadily narrowing close-quarters horror films? Despite all the sequences of elaborate fantasy dreamscapes, the entire story is still unfolding inside Vincent D'Onofrio's head. And knowing how creepy Vince is in real life, the idea of being trapped in his brain is far from ideal.