Hokum (2026)
Haunted Hotel
Irish director Damian McCarthy impressed a good deal with Oddity. In his equally spooky follow-up, writer Adam Scott travels to a hotel in Ireland only to become trapped in a haunted suite
Imprisonment Thrillers
This refers to thrillers where someone is held prisoner by a captor. The drama of the story centers around their attempts to escape from confinement, where suspense rides a rollercoaster around the building up of hopes and seeing them dashed.
There have been a number of films about people imprisoned by psychos, serial killers and backwoods hicks. A popular variant came during the Torture Porn fad where people were imprisoned in locked rooms and forced to participate in cruel and sadistic games.
Of more recent has been the Conceptual Containment Thriller, which seeks to confine a person or persons in as small a place as possible – a coffin, an elevator, a tree, a tent, a phone booth – for the duration of the show.
The topic is discussed in more depth in the essay Imprisonment Thrillers
The Hole (2001)
Imprisonment and Subjective Truth Psycho-Thriller
British psycho-thriller about teenagers trapped inside a bunker. This does an interesting mid-film twist to offer an entirely different version of the story but never rises above the middle-of-the-road
Hollow Creek (2016)
Abducted Woman Thriller
Although effort is made to sell this as a horror film and there are some ghosts, this is far more of a missing woman thriller. A directing/writing debut for Guisela Moro who plays the abducted woman
Hounds of Love (2016)
Couple Abduct and Imprison a Teenage Girl
Australian film about a couple that abduct and imprison a teenage girl. This received some very good notices in theatrical release but as a horror film, it soft pedals and seems to avoid most of its horror element
The House of the Dead (1978)
Horror Anthology
Not to be confused with the Uwe Boll videogame adaptation, this is an obscure but not entirely uninteresting horror anthology from the 1970s that tells several tales set around a funeral parlour
The House of Usher (1989)
Modernised Edgar Allan Poe Adaptation
This makes an interesting attempt to tell a modern-day version of the Edgar Allan Poe story but the film’s emphasis on cheap shock effects is a far cry from Poe’s masterful mood of despair and desolation
House of Whipcord (1974)
Imprisonment and Torture
The best film from UK director Pete Walker. All of Walker’s film have a horror of ingrained institutionalism. This, concerning a private prison where morally lax women are abducted and tortured, is depicted with an extraordinary cruelty
The Housemaid (2025)
Psycho-Thriller
An airport psycho-thriller that feels like wannabe Gillian Flynn that has been mounted as a vehicle for the talent-handicapped Sydney Sweeney. The whole plot hangs on a believability stretching mid-film twist revelation
The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (2011)
Madman Surgically Connects Human Bodies
Sequel to the original that pushes into even more perverse territory. This throws some amusing spins on the original, creating a unique protagonist, while also contriving to exist inside an extremely disturbed headspace
The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence) (2015)
Prison Warden Surgically Connects Prisoners' Bodies
The first two Human Centipede films are masterpieces of twisted extremes. The third entry goes astray in giving the show over to Dieter Laser in one of the most over-the-top performances ever unleashed
The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009)
Mad Surgeon Connects Human Bodies
An astonishingly perverse work where a mad surgeon abducts three people intending to connect their bodies as a single digestive tract. This is a work that pushes itself into truly warped territory
I Came By (2022)
House Breakers Encounter a Psycho
Form the fine and underrated Babak Anvari, a tight thriller about a duo of graffiti artists who get more than they planned for when they break into the home of a psycho Hugh Bonneville
In the Tall Grass (2019)
Trapped in a Sea of Grass/Stephen King Adaptation
Vincenzo Natali, the director of Cube, adapts a novella by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill about people becoming lost in a topographically and temporally shifting sea of grass
Iron Doors (2010)
Imprisonment Thriller/Labyrinth Film
A modest German-made film not dissimilar to Cube in which a man wakes up inside a labyrinth of locked rooms and must find a means of escape
It’s Alive! (1969)
Backwoods Sadist/Prehistoric Creature
Larry Buchanan is a director on a par with Edward D. Wood Jr. This, not to be confused with the 1974 killer baby film, is his best film. Buchanan creates a perverse obsessiveness that is fascinating to watch
Jigsaw (2017)
Saw Sequel
Whether we asked for it or not, this is a revival of the Saw series. The upside is that unlike the other sequels it comes from a duo of directors who have made some quite good films elsewhere
Kill Theory (2009)
People Imprisoned in an Elimination Game
This has clearly been conceived as Saw by way of Big Brother in which a group of teens are imprisoned in a house and forced to eliminate one another until only one remains
Landmine Goes Click (2015)
Character Trapped Standing on a Landmine
A film that sells its premise in three words. Essentially a variant on Phone Booth, this keeps a character trapped on a landmine unable to move and keeps piling on torturous twists from there
The Ledge (2022)
Woman Faces Killers on a Mountainside
A thriller that sells itself to you with its premise where a woman who witnesses a murder and then must face the killers while trapped on a tiny ledge on a mountainside
The Lesson (2015)
Schoolteacher Tortures Pupils
A milquetoast teacher tires of disrespectful pupils and imprisons two of them with the intention of torturing them into learning. The idea of an intellectual Torture Porn film if such is not an oxymoron.
Little Bone Lodge (2023)
Home Invasion/House of Secrets
A thriller in which two brothers fleeing police take refuge at a farmhouse where it becomes increasingly apparent that there are secrets and sinister goings-on
Live Animals (2008)
Imprisonment and Torture
A film made not long after the advent of the Torture Porn fad in which a group of friends are imprisoned on a farm to be broken and sold into slavery
Locked (2025)
Man Trapped Inside an SUV
A thriller in which Bill Skarsgård is a petty thief who break into a SUV only to become trapped inside and psychologically tormented by the vehicle’s owner Anthony Hopkins
The Loved Ones (2009)
Australian Psycho Prom Date Black Comedy
Australian black comedy about a guy imprisoned to be a girl’s perfect prom date. The film takes to horror with enthusiasm and is owned by two fantastic performances from the women of the show
The Maddening (1995)
Imprisonment Thriller
Rather trashy thriller in which Mia Sara is imprisoned by backwoods couple Burt Reynolds and Angie Dickinson
Marian, Again (2005)
Missing Woman Psycho-Thriller
Strong and effective UK tv thriller where Stephen Tompkinson becomes obsessed with the girlfriend who went missing years earlier after he thinks he sees her again
Martyrs (2008)
Imprisonment and Torture
Pascal Laugier makes one of the most horrific films to emerge from France in the 00s. Scenes of grim torture sit alongside a plot that twists like a pretzel and messes with almost everything we take for granted
Martyrs (2015)
Imprisonment and Torture
Martyrs was one of the most grimly disturbing films of the 2000s; this English-language remake, which waters everything down and rewrites the ending to have one of the girls bursting in to save the other with a shotgun counts as surely one of the great all-time cinematic bad ideas
Meander (2020)
Mysterious Labyrinth
This may be the most claustrophobic film ever made about a woman trapped inside a labyrinth of narrow tunnels and crawlspaces that house a series of death traps
Michael (2011)
Paedophile and His Child Prisoner
Chilling portrait of a paedophile and the young boy he keeps locked in his cellar. The entire film is an astonishing exercise in calm and mannered understatement
Misery (1990)
Writer Imprisoned by a Psycho Fan/Stephen King Adaptation
A classic Stephen King adaptation from Rob Reiner with writer James Caan imprisoned by psycho fan Kathy Bates, who gives a terrifying performance that won her an Academy Award
Moksha – Or The World and I, How Does That Work? (2012)
Man Chained Up/Existential Parable
Imagine a weird mix between the basic premise of Saw and Waiting for Godot. A South Korean film about a man inexplicably chained up in a park that is less interested in his escape than it becomes a surreal existential allegory for life
Mum & Dad (2008)
Imprisonment By a Perverse Family
Brutal and harrowing British drama that locates a Texas Chain Saw Massacre-type show in an urban setting, featuring a couple known as Mum and Dad who maintain a family of imprisoned captives. This delves down into a genuinely disturbed headspace in some of the performances
Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly (1969)
Grown-Ups Play Deadly Children's Games
Freddie Francis was one of the key players of the 1960s/70s Anglo-horror cycle – he always claimed that this was his favourite film, although it has seen little distribution. The film consists of an annoyingly giggly scenes of adults running around playing children’s games
No Escape Room (2018)
Haunted Escape Room
Another in the fad for horror films about escape rooms we have had in the last few years, this concerns a possibly haunted venue and reaches an interestingly odd ending
No Tears in Hell (2025)
True Crime/Cannibal Murders
A True Crime film loosely based on an incident in Russia in the 1990s where a man and his mother killed homeless people and ate their flesh. This pushes the material into an admirably grim and disturbing place
Oldboy (2003)
Imprisonment and Revenge
Electrifyingly ultra-violent film from Park Chan-wook who ably borrows from Takashi Miike. The film equally becomes a conceptual twister as the protagonist is forced to go on a reality-bending quest through his own life.
Oldboy (2013)
Imprisonment and Revenge
Spike Lee’s English-language remake of Oldboy is an abortion. Where Park Chan-Wook directed the original with an insane energy, whereas Lee only delivers a formula action film and fumbles the ending
100 Feet (2008)
Woman Confined on Home Detention in a Haunted Apartment
This lifts the premise of Disturbia – protagonist confined to home detention who spies a killer next door – but then asks what would happen if the space they were confined was haunted
1BR (2019)
Sinister Apartment Complex
A girl moves into a new and welcoming apartment complex only to be imprisoned and tortured by her neighbours into following the code of moral precepts by which they live
The Ordeal (2004)
Backwoods Brutality
A Belgian-made venture into Backwoods Brutality territory that keeps heading into stranger and more disturbing places until it almost seems to be taking place on another planet altogether
Otis (2008)
Psycho Film
Film about a big overweight psycho who abducts girls and makes them enact a fantasy of being a cheerleader. Produced by one of the directors of The Blair Witch Project
The Owners (2020)
Home Invasion/Sinister Occupants
Maisie Williams and an aging Sylvester McCoy in a film about house burglars who break in to a home to discover sinister things afoot
Oxygen (2021)
Woman Imprisoned in a Cryogenic Capsule
Imprisonment thriller where Melanie Laurent wakes up trapped inside a cryogenic capsule, this expands out to become an excellent SF film
P2 (2007)
Imprisonment Psycho-Thriller
Tense and twist-filled thriller with Rachel Nichols trapped inside a carpark building by a psychopathic Wes Bentley
Paradise Hills (2019)
Future Re-Education Facility
Nacho Vigalondo scripted film that seems like a mix between a girls’ boarding school story and an SF film like The Island, all directed with amazingly over-ornamented costuming and design scheme not seen on screen since at least The Cell
Paranoid (2000)
Imprisonment Psycho-Thriller
Psycho-thriller in which Jessica Alba finds herself drugged and then held a captive prisoner by Iain Glen
The People Under the Stairs (1991)
Children Imprisoned in the Basement
Wes Craven in which a young thief breaks into a home where a crazed couple imprison children and have turned the house into a series of deathtraps
Perfect Skin (2018)
Girl Imprisoned by a Psycho Tattooist
Thriller in which a girl is abducted and imprisoned by a mad tattooist who wants to use her body as a work of art
Perfect Strangers (2003)
Abduction Thriller/Ambiguous Ghost
Very strange New Zealand-made film that starts out seeming to be an abduction thriller and then turns into an even stranger ghost story that we cannot be sure is happening or all in the heroine’s imagination
Pet (2016)
Man Abducts the Girl He is Obsessed With
This seems to be shaping up to be a modern variant on The Collector in which Dominic Monaghan abducts the object of his desire and locks her in a cage beneath the dog shelter where he works. From there the film starts to twist expectations on their head
Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare (2025)
Horror Version of Peter Pan
From the people behind Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, this is the horror version of Peter Pan. And good grief, does this go dark with Peter as a child abductor and Tinkerbell who shoots up ‘fairy dust’ through a needle
Phone Booth (2002)
Man Trapped in a Phone Booth by a Psycho Sniper
Sharp and original script from Larry Cohen in which Colin Farrell is trapped inside a phone booth by a sniper. Good story that even the awful Joel Schumacher in the director’s seat doesn’t screw up too badly
Pig (2010)
Backwoods Brutality
A Backwoods Brutality entry from the increasingly underrated Adam Mason where the entire film has been shot in a single take. Often brutal but much of the film seems monotonous with indulgent improvised performances allowed to dominate the show
The Pink Cloud (2021)
Toxic Cloud
Brazilian film that becomes an allegory for Covid lockdown as a toxic cloud forces people to remain indoors for years at a time
The Platform 2 (2024)
Allegorical Prison of Multiple Levels
The Platform offered a striking allegory with a prison where a banquet table of food moved down 300 levels each day. This is a sequel
The Platform (2019)
Allegorical Prison of Multiple Levels
A stunningly allegorical film that falls somewhere between Cube and High-Rise where people are trapped in a prison and forced to fight over food as a banquet table passes down the levels each day, resulting in a society where those at the top claim superiority over those below.
Please Don’t Feed the Children (2024)
Imprisonment Thriller/Zombie Film
Steven Spielberg’s daughter Destry makes her directorial debut with a confused mix of an imprisonment thriller and a zombie film, albeit a zombie film that only produces a single zombie
The Pool (2018)
Trapped in an Empty Pool with a Crocodile
Grippingly intense thriller with a couple trapped in an empty swimming pool along with a hungry crocodile
Raze (2013)
Abducted Girls Forced to Fight to the Death
Fifty girls have been abducted and are paired off and forced to fight to the death with their bare hands in an arena – essentially Saw by way of Girlfight. A tautly streamlined and grittily effective effort that succeeds modestly well at everything it sets out to do
Recovery (2016)
Search for a Missing Cellphone Leads to a Sinister House
A film that starts with the premise of teenage girls looking for a party and then going in search of a missing cellphone doesn’t do much to enthuse me. On the other hand, things pick up when the search leads them to a strange house
Repentance (2014)
Imprisonment Thriller
A film with identity disorder – the title and promotion makes it seem a revenge-action film only for it to conduct a number of strange doglegs and eventually arrive at a plot wherein life coach Anthony Mackie is tied up in the cellar by Forest Whitaker who feeds his inspirational lines back at him
The Retreat (2021)
Backwoods Brutality
The Backwoods Brutality film given an LGBT spin where a lesbian couple run afoul of backwoods rednecks
Road Games (2015)
Sinister Happenings in the French Countryside
While the title suggests something of the classic The Hitcher, this reminds more of And Soon the Darkness with its image of tourists being stalked in the pastoral French countryside. Ravishingly photographed, creating a strong sense of dis-ease to arrive at a great twist ending
Rogue River (2012)
Imprisonment Thriller
Imprisonment thriller where a woman finds herself confined by deranged husband and wife Bill Moseley and Lucinda Jenney
A Room to Die For (2017)
Sinister Landlords
London couple find the perfect room to rent in the home of a very strange aging husband and wife. What starts out seeming an oddball comedy gradually slides over into horror movie territory but in truth this is not a very well made film on all fronts
Run. (2020)
Wheelchair-Ridden Teen Imprisoned by a Psycho Mother
Well constructed thriller where a wheelchair-confined teenager discovers that her mother is up to sinister purpose and attempts to escape despite her lack of mobility
Rupture (2016)
Woman Abducted Into a Series of Mysterious Experiments
Puzzling and enigmatic film in which Noomi Rapace is a regular mom who is abducted and forced to take place in a series of experiments by a group of people who may not even be human
St Agatha (2018)
Imprisoned in a Catholic Convent
Saw series director Darren Lynn Bousman makes a film set at a convent for unwed mothers in the 1950s. Is there any chance this might be a work about institutional cruelty or the plight of unwed mothers in the era? Hardly, all it really is is Bousman inflicting a series of tortures on the girls
Save the Green Planet (2003)
Man Imprisoned By Someone Who Insists He is an Alien
A bizarre South Korean comedy about a businessman who is imprisoned by a possibly crazed man who insists that he is an alien. Things sit in an absurdly funny ambiguity. Later remade by Yorgos Lanthimos as Bugonia
Saw (2004)
Killer's Sadistic Games
Forget the grim and sadistic sequels that followed, this low-budget directorial debut from James Wan is a masterwork that conjures unbearable dread and tension in its study of characters forced to consider the horribly inconceivable
Saw II (2005)
Killer's Sadistic Games
The first sequel to the sleeper success of Saw where Darren Lynn Bousman inherits the director’s chair but delivers a film that lacks the torturous suspense that James Wan gave the original
Saw III (2006)
Killer's Sadistic Games
Third of the Saw films and the point where director Darren Lynn Bousman places the series’ focus on grim gore-drenched sadism and torture
Saw 3D (2010)
Killer's Sadistic Games
Supposedly the final chapter of the Saw saga – where the sole novelty on offer is gore and body parts coming out the screen in 3D. This is conducted with a tired lack of effort that makes for tedium-inducing watching
Saw IV (2007)
Killer's Sadistic Games
Fourth of the Saw films, the third under Darren Lynn Bousman who has placed an increasing emphasis on torturous extremes at the expense of credible plotting
Saw V (2008)
Killer's Sadistic Games
Fifth of the Saw films. By now the series has developed such a complicated backstory it is difficult following how it all pieces together
Saw VI (2009)
Killer's Sadistic Games
Sixth time around and the backstory is starting to become so excessively complicated it is hard to follow what is going on. All the gruesome torturings now seem passe, although this does redeem itself somewhat in making a few black digs at the medical health industry
Saw X (2023)
Saw Sequel
The Saw series is back and this has been getting some of the best reviews of any entries in the series
Scissors (1991)
Imprisonment Psycho-Thriller
Impressive psycho-thriller from Frank De Felitta that plays out with the silent logic of a nightmare as a young unknown Sharon Stone finds herself a prisoner in an apartment
The Seasoning House (2012)
East European Sex Slavery
This starts out as a socially conscious drama about East European sex slavery. As directed by a makeup effects artist, the film seems to tepidly avoid the raw and brutal impact the material holds, before finally revealing its true nature as an imprisonment and revenge horror
Serpent (2017)
Couple Trapped in a Tent with a Deadly Snake
South African thriller that borrows much of its premise from Buried as a married couple camping in a remote gorge are trapped inside their tent with a deadly snake – only for secrets in the marriage to prove just as deadly
Shadow Puppets (2007)
Mysterious Labyrinth/Conceptual Breakthrough
A conceptual puzzle film – people wake up in a facility with no memory of who they are – reminiscent of Cube with the smoke monsters from Lost thrown in. Unfortunately, this is too low-budget to create much mystery and the big reveal is not a terribly interesting one
Shut In (2022)
Woman Imprisoned in a Pantry by Her Ex
An imprisonment thriller where a woman is nailed into a pantry by her abusive ex
Shuttle (2008)
Abduction Aboard an Airport Shuttle
A group of people taking a shuttle back from the airport are taken abducted and made prisoner. One of what this author has termed Conceptual Containment Thrillers, which confine the action to a single locale, this has some twists and turns but does nothing remarkable with the idea
Singapore Sling (1990)
Torture and Perverse Goings-On
Completely demented Greek film about a mother and daughter imprisoning and torturing people in a big old house
The Skin I Live In (2011)
Mad Surgeon and His Woman Prisoner
Pedro Almodovar’s exquisitely lush homage to the mad surgeon fiilm Eyes Without a Face features a superb left field twist to become an extraordinary meditation on gender and identity
Spare Parts (2020)
Girl Punk Band Become Gladiators with Weapons Attachments
I was sold from the point of reading the premise where an all-girl punk band is abducted, surgically given weapons attachments and forced to fight in an arena
Spell (2020)
Backwoods Voodoo
Bizarrely overwrought film in which a successful city lawyer is made prisoner by a backwoods voodoo priestess
Split (2017)
Split-Personality Psycho
M. Night Shyamalan’s name took a nosedive throughout most of the 2000s (although I am prepared to defend him) but he received some of his best notices in years with his collaborations for Blumhouse, This split personality thriller, anchored by a tour-de-force performance(s) from James McAvoy, continues the upward trend
The Steam Experiment (2009)
Imprisonment Thriller
This offers one of the more original twists on the Saw set-up – Val Kilmer plays a professor who imprisons a group of people in a steam room slowly turning the temperature up as a protest against global warming.
The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968)
Horror Anthology
Brazil’s Jose Mojica Marins became a cult figure for his Coffin Joe films; this is an anthology sold under the Coffin Joe banner. Without the Coffin Joe presence, all we have is a series of not very well directed pieces that linger on perversity, although the final segment does stand out memorably
Stuck (2007)
True Crime/Hit and Run Victim Trapped in a Car Windscreen
Stuart Gordon, the cult director of Re-Animator, makes a film based on a bizarre true incident where a woman ran a homeless man down and drove home with him still impacted through the windshield of her car
The Tank (2017)
NASA Environmental Habitat Drama
Thriller set around a NASA habitat built for future Mars exploration in the Arctic where the team is torn apart by the isolation and mental instability of team members. There is nothing here that holds you particularly gripped.
Tau (2018)
Imprisoned Woman Befriends an A.I.
This comes with an intriguing central premise – a woman is imprisoned in the house of a mad tech genius where her only hope of escape is befriending his home security A.I. that is hungry for input about the world. An interesting idea alas doesn’t carry it past an ill-informed idea of how an A.I. would behave
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Trapped in a Survival Shelter/Mysterious Catastrophe
Sequel in name only to Cloverfield, this takes place in a survival shelter where an unspecified catastrophe has happened outside but we cannot be certain what or even if anything at all. Okay but films like Take Shelter and The Divide did this much better
Territories (2010)
Rogue Border Guards Torture Tourists
An appealingly politicised variant on the Backwoods Brutality film in which two rogue US border guards decide to set up their own home Guantanamo Bay … not Torture Porn but an effectively brutal study on the effect of torture
Till Death (2021)
Wife Handcuffed to Her Husband’s Corpse
This had me sold from its one sentence description – Megan Fox is a wife trying to escape hired killers while handcuffed to her husband’s corpse
To Your Last Death (2019)
Animation/Brutal Survival in an Office Building/Alien Game
Animated film that is gore-drenched and certainly not for children. Imagine The Belko Experiment conceived as a videogame where the heroine has to survive an office of people trying to kill her while aliens bet on the outcome
Torn Hearts (2022)
Batty Old Dame
Rather good film featuring Married … With Children’s Katey Sagal who gives a splendidly deranged performance in the full Baby Jane mode as an aging Country and Western star
Trunk (2023)
Girl Imprisoned in a Car Trunk
Gripping German thriller with a woman abducted and imprisoned in a car trunk. Like Buried, this takes place entirely inside the trunk with her using her phone to try to get help