Comingsoon.net is locked away trying to determine the best movies that take place in a single location. See our choices in the gallery below!
While it might not be the first thing on one’s mind when analyzing what makes a movie work, a movie’s setting is almost always integral to how the story plays out. If it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be such thing as a set designer, a costume department, a location scout, and so on. Sometimes all it takes to appreciate the importance of setting is to watch a movie that locks itself into one single location.
It sounds strange, but it’s actually a more common gimmick than you might think. Many of the most revered films utilize it, and some of today’s most impressive genre films embrace the trick as well. Of course, there are plenty of examples, but the best of the best are compiled here.
One location movies
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10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
The sequel to the incredibly popular found-footage thriller Cloverfield, 10 Cloverfield Lane sticks its three leads inside an underground bunker and follows them as the apocalypse rages on above them. John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead give it their everything, proving that you don’t need a bunch of different locations in order to propel a story forward.
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127 Hours (2010)
Danny Boyle’s 2010 film 127 Hours tells the true story of a man who got trapped at the bottom of the Grand Canyon with his arm pinned by a gigantic rock. Unable to escape, the film follows the man as he struggles to survive down there at the bottom.
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Green Room (2015)
Jeremy Saulnier is one of the most exciting up-and-comers working today. His 2015 film amps up the thills as its main characters, a punk band, are locked in the back room of a bar overflowing with neo-Nazis.
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Misery (1990)
Apart from a few scenes at the beginning and several that take place during a police investigation, 1990’s Misery follows a trapped author held captive in a remote mountain home by a crazed fan demanding he rewrite his latest novel according to her standards. It’s heart-pounding and tense, with Kathy Bates delivering the performance of a lifetime here.
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Rear Window (1954)
Alfred Hitchcock was always embracing gimmicks throughout his career as the mastermind behind the thriller genre. 1954’s Rear Window sees the filmmaker placing his main character in an apartment, arming them with a pair of binoculars and an injury that keeps him wheelchair-bound.
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Room (2015)
The Brie Larson-Jacob Tremblay vehicle Room was an Oscar darling back in 2015—probably because, like with many of the films on this list, it keeps its lead actors in one spot and more or less forces them to rely solely on their acting abilities to keep things interesting. Here, Larson and Tremblay play kidnapping victims stuck for over seven years in a tiny little room.
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Rope (1948)
Remember how we mentioned Hitchcock and his love of gimmicks? Rope is another example, this one taking place entirely inside an apartment in the midst of a murder plot.
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The Hateful Eight (2015)
Quentin Tarantino is known for being a director who embodies everything but restraint. That’s why it was so surprising to see his 2015 film The Hateful Eight take place almost entirely inside a snowy cabin up in the mountains, complete with a bunch of deranged figures out for a bounty in the Wild West.
