Zinda (2006)
Imprisonment and Revenge
A blatant Bollywood copy of Oldboy, often scene-for-scene
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 Womb (2014)
Pregnant Woman Held Prisoner
The first occasion I have had to review a horror film from Peru – a thriller about a young woman imprisoned and forced to bear a child. This is never a work that particularly reinvents the wheel, just turns out a solid and suspenseful imprisonment thriller
The Woman (2011)
Uncivilised Wild Woman/Sadism and Brutality
Lucky McKee’s highly controversial film about a family man who makes a feral woman prisoner is out-there, takes-no-prisoners horror. Forget the kneejerk reactions, this is brutal, highly original and with a whiplash sense of dark humour
We Need to Do Something (2021)
Family Trapped in a Bathroom During a Mysterious Catastrophe
A horror film made as an allegory for Covid with a family trapped inside a bathroom without supplies as a mysterious catastrophe happens outside their door
Vivarium (2019)
Couple Trapped in a Strange Suburb
A real mindscrew of a film in which Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg are a couple who enter a strangely unreal suburb of identical houses and find they can’t leave. Then things start to get really strange.
Villains (2019)
Criminals on the Run Imprisoned by Psychos Comedy
A film with a wonderfully eccentric and offbeat sense of humour where Bill Skarsgård and Maika Monroe are inept criminals fleeing after a robbery who end up prisoners of a psychopathic couple
Vile (2011)
Sadism and Torture
I’m tempted to make a comment about this being a film that offers its own critical summary in its title but this Saw wannabe is so tame it fails even that. Hard to believe a film with a premise about a group of people forced to torture one another could emerge so dramatically uninteresting
V/H/S/Beyond (2024)
Anthology of Found Footage Horror Tales
Seventh of the V/H/S Found Footage horror anthologies, this is one of the best with a number of the episodes venturing into SF and others that feature some genuinely outlandish moments
Unseen (2023)
Blind Woman Flees Through the Woods
A film with an ingenious premise where a nearly blind woman must rely on a total stranger to guide her by her phone through the woods while avoiding a pursuer
247°F (2011)
Characters Trapped Inside a Sauna
In the vein of films like Phone Booth and Buried, a Conceptual Containment Thriller with a group of people trapped in a sauna with the heat being turned up. From the director who later made Landmine Goes Click in this same vein
200 Degrees (2017)
Man Locked in a Room as the Temperature is Turned Up
A thriller in the vein of films such as Phone Booth and especially Buried with Eric Balfour locked in a room in a warehouse with heat lamps that are slowly turning the temperature up to the title level. This ratchets suspense well, Balfour is good but things fall apart at the denouement
Two (2021)
Man and Woman Wake Up Surgically Attached
A Spanish film with a wonderfully ick and queasy premise where a man and a woman wake up in bed together to find they have been surgically attached at the waist
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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 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
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.
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
Spell (2020)
Backwoods Voodoo
Bizarrely overwrought film in which a successful city lawyer is made prisoner by a backwoods voodoo priestess
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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 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 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 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 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 (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
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
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
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
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
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
Rogue River (2012)
Imprisonment Thriller
Imprisonment thriller where a woman finds herself confined by deranged husband and wife Bill Moseley and Lucinda Jenney
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
The Retreat (2021)
Backwoods Brutality
The Backwoods Brutality film given an LGBT spin where a lesbian couple run afoul of backwoods rednecks
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
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
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
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
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 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.
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Paranoid (2000)
Imprisonment Psycho-Thriller
Psycho-thriller in which Jessica Alba finds herself drugged and then held a captive prisoner by Iain Glen
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
P2 (2007)
Imprisonment Psycho-Thriller
Tense and twist-filled thriller with Rachel Nichols trapped inside a carpark building by a psychopathic Wes Bentley
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 messes with almost everything we take for granted
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
The Maddening (1995)
Imprisonment Thriller
Rather trashy thriller in which Mia Sara is imprisoned by backwoods couple Burt Reynolds and Angie Dickinson
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
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
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
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
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.
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 Last House (2026)
Trapped Inside a House
A real head-scratcher where all of humanity suddenly find that they are trapped inside their houses and cannot get out. While outside there lurk sea monsters!
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
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
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
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
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