There are many different ways to make a horror movie scary, ranging from the use of jump scares (effective jump scares, that is) to layering a generally creepy atmosphere over an otherwise un-horrific story. One way to frighten audiences is to prey on their claustrophobia. While some people have it worse than others, no one likes being trapped in enclosed spaces.

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Horror filmmakers have been exploiting this fear for years with cinematic tales about unwitting characters being trapped in secluded locations or confined to small spaces like a room or an underground bunker (or even a buried coffin). John Carpenter’s The Thing is a perfect example.

The Thing (1982)

A scared MacReady looking at someone through some smoke

John Carpenter’s The Thing is a chilly, claustrophobic horror masterpiece loosely adapted from John W. Campbell, Jr.’s 1938 novella Who Goes There?, which also formed the basis for Howard Hawks’ 1951 B-movie production The Thing from Another World.

Kurt Russell leads a team of scientists at an Arctic outpost who encounter a sinister otherworldly presence with the ability to shapeshift into any form — including seamlessly impersonating anyone among them.

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

10 Cloverfield Lane

While its final act is let down by dragging the story into the wider Cloverfield universe, 10 Cloverfield Lane is initially set up as a very tense, very claustrophobic thriller.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars as a woman who wakes up in an underground bunker and John Goodman co-stars as a mysterious stranger who claims to have saved her from the end of the world, but suspiciously won’t let her go up to the surface to check if he’s telling the truth.

Misery (1990)

Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes in Misery

In the opening scenes of Misery, directed by Rob Reiner, renowned author Paul Sheldon is caught in a car accident and rescued by his biggest fan, Annie Wilkes. Annie takes Paul back to her house to nurse him back to health, but after a while, he starts to feel more like a prisoner than a patient.

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James Caan and an Oscar-winning Kathy Bates are perfectly matched as Paul and Annie, respectively, with the former playing a relatable everyman and the latter playing one of the most unforgettable villains in the history of horror cinema.

Saw (2004)

Lawrence Gordon reaching for the saw in Saw

Although it eventually deviates into subplots involving the cops hunting the Jigsaw killer and flashbacks filling in the characters’ history, James Wan’s Saw initially opens with two perfect strangers waking up chained to a filthy bathroom with a corpse lying on the floor between them.

Throughout the movie, they’re teased by a sadistic puppet named Billy and tempted to free themselves by cutting off a limb with a hacksaw. The sequels devolved into shameless torture porn, but Wan’s original is a smart movie.

Hush (2016)

Kate Siegel stalked by a masked killer in Hush

Before becoming a go-to Stephen King adapter with the success of Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep, Mike Flanagan caught King’s attention with 2016’s Hush, which the iconic horror author considered to be “up there with Halloween and, even more, Wait Until Dark.”

Kate Siegel, who co-wrote the script with Flanagan, stars as a deaf writer who lives in a cabin in the woods and spends a night being terrorized by the masked maniac who murdered her neighbors.

The Descent (2005)

The cave-dwelling mutants in The Descent

Neil Marshall’s blood-drenched gem The Descent opens with a group of friends on a caving expedition that takes a terrifying turn when they’re stuck in a cave-in and one of them reveals that the cave they’re in is uncharted, so they could be trapped forever.

As if the cave-in isn’t scary enough, they soon learn that the cave is inhabited by flesh-eating mutants who can see through the pitch-black and want nothing more than to pin the spelunkers down and tear them to shreds.

Alien (1979)

Sigourney Weaver holding a flamethrower in Alien

Ridley Scott’s Alien is a rare sci-fi horror movie that brings out the best of both genres with the thought-provoking themes and allegories of science fiction and the Hitchcockian suspense and relentless terror of horror cinema.

The story of the Nostromo space crew contending with a bloodthirsty alien that makes its way aboard the ship is a masterclass in filmmaking in Scott’s hands. The pacing is perfect, with plenty of time dedicated to rounding out the characters before the first big scare.

Repulsion (1965)

Catherine Deneuve in Roman Polanski's Repulsion

The first installment in Roman Polanski’s “Apartment Trilogy,” Repulsion stars Catherine Deneuve as a woman with a phobia of men who’s left alone in her sister’s apartment while she goes on a romantic getaway.

She starts to lose her mind with hallucinations of hands reaching out of the walls to grab her, and as various suitors refuse to leave her alone, she starts killing them.

Get Out (2017)

Daniel Kaluuya smiling in a denim jacket in Get Out.

In Jordan Peele’s directorial debut Get Out, Black photographer Chris Washington travels up to his white girlfriend’s WASP-y parents’ predominantly white gated community.

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There’s an ominous feeling throughout the film that he can’t leave and that things aren’t as they seem. Peele expertly builds to terrifying twists and turns that pay off all the movie’s big questions.

The Shining (1980)

Shelly Duvall as Wendy Torrance in The Shining

Loosely adapted from Stephen King’s bestselling novel of the same name, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining begins with struggling writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) taking a job as the winter caretaker at the Overlook Hotel.

Over the course of the winter, stuck in snowy isolation with a wife and son he can’t stand (and under the influence of the hotel’s sinister demonic spirits), Jack gradually goes insane.

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