Movies in which Two or More People Are Held in a Confined Space with No Idea Why

A while ago, when I asked for feedback on this blog, my friend Megan's husband said I should review a couple of movies in the same genre together.  I explained that I didn't actually want format feedback, because I'm pretty much doing this blog the way I do it - I wanted more content feedback, since some posts are long and involved and others really have very little info in them.

That said, lately I've been watching a ton of movies where two or more people are held in a confined space and have to figure out a number of things, including why, how to get out, etc.

To help you navigate through this genre, I am listing the ones I've seen, including the basic plotline.  They're all pretty good, although #1 is the best.  If you can think of one I've missed, let me know and I'll include it.

1. Saw, the first one:  This movie is ridiculously good.  It was the first movie of its type, not to mention the first movie in years to bring "horror" movies to a new level.  The third and fifth one are also good, but I wasn't that huge a fan of 2 and 4.  After that I stopped watching but aspire to catch up someday.  The plot, as far as I remember it, are that two men wake up in a large, really gross bathroom-ish place, with instructions about how to escape.  There's a saw, and some other stuff.  Neither knows why he is there.  In the meantime, other people are being killed in torturous ways, each for some judgy reason kind of like in the movie Se7en.
2. House Hunting:  This Marc Singer vehicle involves two families who are looking at real estate.  When approaching one house, they find a disoriented, freaked-out girl running through the woods, so they pick her up.  After that, everything they do leads back to that house.  There's no way out. And they don't understand why they're there.
3. Nine Dead: This Melissa Joan Hart thriller involves nine people who wake up in a dungeon, each handcuffed to his or her own private pipe.  They have to figure out what they all have in common, or else every 10 minutes one of them will be killed.  But even if you're killed they still have to figure out what you have in common with the rest of them, only you're not there to help.
4. Hunger: Five people wake up in a cave-like-well-type place with no food, so their captor can see whether they'll eventually eat each other.  
5. Truth or Die: Five young Brits drive to the country to attend an acquaintance's birthday party, and end up being held hostage and tortured 
6. ATM: Three coworkers are held hostage at a freestanding ATM building by some dude in a parka, despite their efforts to make him go away
7. ???: I saw another movie like this awhile ago, where a bunch of people think they're applying for a job, and it turns out they're being held hostage.  I can't remember the name, let me know if you've seen this.
8. Elevator: Nine people are on their way to an investment group's cocktail party when they get stuck in an elevator.  They have to figure out which one is harboring major resentment and an even bigger dangerous secret!
9. Vile: Seven people find themselves in a house with weird contraptions on the back of their necks.  They have 24 hours to torture each other to get enough neurochemicals to drain into the contraptions before they all die.
10. Die: Six people are forced to determine each other's fate with the roll of a die.  Lots of backstory and consequences.  
11. Unknown: watching it tonight

Grave Encounters (I and II)

Netflix recommended these to me, and I watched the first one last night and the second one today.

The premise of the first one: a television crew goes to the abandoned, fictitious "Collingwood" mental institution, to film things that go bump in the night.  Spoiler: the crew ends up going bump in the night.  Only it's more drawn out than that.

• There are some good scares
• I bet that would be a really scary thing to do
• Also a stupid thing to do
• But the kind of thing television crews like to do
• I bet this would have been good to see in the theater, but when you go back and watch the scary scenes frame by frame, the special effects are WEAK
• As mentioned before, I've seen Paranormal Activity about 100 times.  One thing that movie has over this movie is more stationary footage - this movie has WAY TOO MUCH footage of people running while holding handheld cameras.  We get it, it's about a television crew, slow down and let us see what's happening for the love of God.
• Otherwise, decent.

The premise of the second one: a film student doubts the reality of the first movie and takes his pals to "Collingwood" to check it out.

• Second verse, nowhere near as good as the first
• And the first wasn't the best thing I ever saw
• This one MENTIONS how stupid the special effects were in the first one, and then proceeds to have...WORSE special effects?  That shouldn't be allowed.
• They're supposed to be 10 years apart.  Which is ridiculous: they were released ONE year apart and have the same stupid technology, filmwise, in both of them.

Released: 2011 and 2012, respectively

Availability: DVD and streaming

Reason I watched: Netflix recommended

Apartment 143

This is a movie about a group of parapsychologists who go into an apartment and try to help its occupants (a widower, his teenage daughter, and young son) understand what is happening to them (they're hearing weird things, seeing weird things, the usual ghost hunter/poltergeist movie).

Things to know about me:

• Paranormal Activity is a movie I have seen probably 100 times
• Poltergeist is a movie I have seen probably 100 times

This movie is pretty good, and has some great scares.  It's not as good as the abovementioned movies, obviously.  But if you want to watch something different, this might be it.

As I typed this, I kept hearing faint screams and scary noises, and it freaked me out.  But it turned out that a webpage for this movie was playing scenes, which I was hearing through my headphones, which were lying on the bed.  Twilight Zone!

Released: 2011

Availability: DVD and streaming

Reason I watched: Netflix recommended

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus

So, okay.

I'm really struggling with this movie.  The premise is that Nicole Kidman plays Diane Arbus, with Modern Family's Ty Burrell as her husband Allan, and Robert Downey, Jr. as their upstairs neighbor, who gradually draws Diane into his world as they fall in love.

So here's my stream of consciousness about this movie...

• It is so, so good.
• It bothers me that it isn't really true, despite the fact that the title says "imaginary" - I still want a biopic to be more bio, like maybe Sylvia or something...
• I would follow RDJ off a cliff without a second thought.
• Apparently it's pronounced "DEE-anne"

Dude.  I thought I had more on my mind about this movie but I think these points sum it up.  Every actor in this movie is amazing, including and especially Burrell, who is heartbreaking as a husband who knows he's losing his wife and still loves her way more than she deserves (that seems really harsh, and it's clear she loves him too, but the whole thing is just...something else).

I loved it.  If it hadn't been centered on two real people who didn't actually know each other in real life, I'd feel better about it.  I'm not good at abstract statements about real things.  I take a story at face value.  It's a defect of mine.  But if you are someone who can stand back and take the message from a really lovely story, give it a shot.

Availability: DVD

Released: 2006

Added to my queue: 12/20/2007

Reason added to my queue: Unknown

House at the End of the Street

Jennifer Lawrence stars with Elisabeth Shue as a daughter and mom, respectively, who move to a suburban rental house from Chicago after the mom separates from the dad.  Unfortunately, the only reason they can afford the house is because a girl killed her parents in the house next door.  And her brother still lives there.  Lawrence's character befriends him, and then the truth about it all starts to unravel.

This was a decent movie.  I liked it.  Shue and Lawrence are good as usual, and Billy from Ally McBeal is in it as a balding police officer.

Released: 2012
Availability: DVD and streaming
Why I watched it: Netflix recommended

The Factory

This movie was decent but I watched it too close to The Tall Man, and saw some crazy similarities.

It stars John Cusack and Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter) as police detectives investigating the disappearance of prostitutes in their town.  But then, his daughter, played by Mae Whitman, whom I've adored since When a Man Loves a Woman, which if you haven't seen you'd better watch right this minute, disappears as well, amping up the search for their kidnapper.

Nice job by Mind of the Married Man's Sonya Walger, who plays Cusack's wife.

It's decent.  Watch it way separately from the Tall Man.  Or if you have to choose, watch The Tall Man.

Released: 2012
Availability: DVD and streaming
Why I watched: Recommended by Netflix

The Tall Man

This movie was awesome.  I saw it after The Pact, or else I'd be calling it the first good thing I've seen in awhile.  

Jessica Biel stars as a nurse in a tiny, depressed town where children are regularly disappearing without a trace, apparently kidnapped by a tall man who wears only black.

I can't get into it without ruining it for you.  So good.  Watch it.

Released: 2012

Availability: DVD and streaming

Why I watched: Netflix recommended

The Pact

This is the first US horror movie/thriller that has really impressed me in awhile.

The premise is a young woman named Annie (Caity Lotz, who played Donald Draper's California wife's niece on Mad Men), who goes home for her abusive mother's funeral.  Weird things start happening in the house, which make Annie begin to face some of the weird stuff from her childhood.

SUCH A GOOD MOVIE.  See it.

Availability: DVD and streaming
Released: 2012
Reason I watched: Netflix recommended

Dorm

I really liked this Thai thriller about a boy whose parents suddenly send him to an all-boys boarding school where he knows nobody.  He's pretty pissed at his father, for reasons that are revealed late in the movie.  The other boys torment him with ghost stories that make him wet the bed.  He finally finds a friend, who turns out to be pretty complicated...

It's a good, spooky, touching story.  Well done.

Availability: DVD
Released: 2006
Added to queue: 2/12/2008
Reason added to queue: Asian Horror Invasion!

Sombre

I did not like this movie and I do not recommend you like it.  I am listing the events here for myself, in case I ever for any reason am tempted to watch this again.

• French
• Serial killer of prostitutes picks up a young woman who is stuck in a broken-down car in the rain
• Later, rapes the woman (a virgin) in front of her sister
• Takes her out to a club and forces her to get wasted
• She finally gets away
• Sees him again in the road and *voluntarily* has sex with him
• He forces a passerby to drive her home
• She claims he is her abusive husband who is actually a really nice guy
• Finally, finally, FINALLY, the movie ends

Having volunteered in the ER with victims of rape and domestic violence, I was irritated with this film on several levels.  Did not enjoy.

Format: DVD

Released: 1998

Added to my queue: 4/16/2008

Reason added to my queue: I wish I knew.  

Woman is the Future of Man

This Korean film centers around two friends who each had his own relationship with the same woman years before.  They meet up after not having seen each other in awhile, and awkwardly decide to look her up.  Then they awkwardly fumble through the rest of the movie.

It's good.  All the characters seem kind of clueless, except the woman mentioned above, who seems to have become kind of numb after all the crap she's been through.

But if you like relationship dramas or guys hanging out remembering old times although they kind of don't like each other anymore, this is definitely one to consider.

Availability: DVD and Streaming
Released: 2004
Added to my queue: 2/11/2008
Reason added to my queue: I was obviously on an Asian rampage.

Black Christmas

This remake of the 1974 classic just didn't do it for me.

The premise: residents of a sorority house are terrorized by the crazed murderer who grew up in the house (recently escaping a prison by sneaking into a Santa Claus sack).  Michelle Trachtenberg, Lacey Chabert, and house mother Andrea Martin do about as well as you'd expect.  Meh.

But the ORIGINAL!  So scary and good.  Plus, pre-crazy Margot Kidder!  Check it out.

Availability: DVD
Released: 2006
Added to my queue: 2/7/2011
Reason added to my queue: Probably because I saw the original and loved it

Employee of the Month

I thought this movie was going to be idiotic, but it was actually really cute.  It's a romantic comedy pitting Dane Cook against Dax Shepard (yes, they are two different people) for the title of Employee of the Month of a Costco-esque bulk shopping store.  Whoever wins will allegedly win the affection of Jessica Simpson's character, who is believed to be an EotM groupie.

Dane Cook is endearing as a slacker trying to get it together, while Dax Shepard is the guy who has been EotM for 17 months and acts like it.

If you're looking for a feel-good rom-com, which I never am but actually tend to enjoy, check out this one.

Also, they barely let Jessica Simpson speak.

Availability: DVD only (booooooooo!)
Released: 2006
Added to my queue: 6/2/2007 (Happy 6th anniversary of being in my queue!)
Reason added to my queue: I do not know.

Border Radio

This movie was pretty bad.

Inexplicably in black and white (trying to be artsy?), it depicts an L.A. rocker apparently stealing money from a club and fleeing to Mexico, while the club owner, the other members of the band, and the rocker's wife look for him.  The sound is really bad - anything done outside or in a car, etc., is dubbed over from a studio, so the whole movie sounds like it was recorded in one room.  Weak.

I will say this, though - I thought the movie was from around 1992, and it turns out it was from 1987.  So it was ahead of its time.

But that's according to me.  In reality, 1987 the LA rock scene didn't hit Knoxville until about 1991.

Anyway, I'm still wondering why I had this in my queue for 6 years.

Availability: DVD only
Released: 1987
Added to my queue: 6/2/2007
Reason added to my queue: No frickin' idea.

The Red SHoes

I really liked this movie.  If you're looking for a decent Korean horror movie, this might be the one for you.

That said, the shoes are fuschia.  Which wouldn't be that big a deal, except people wear them with red clothes and red lipstick, so it sort of sticks out that they're not red in the slightest.

The premise of the movie is kind of a riff on the Hans Christian Andersen story of the same name - it centers on a pair of shoes with which people become obsessed, to horrifying ends.  The main character is a woman leaves her cheating husband, taking her small daughter to an apartment.  Then things get crazay!  Just kidding.  Only not really.

Anyway, I don't want to spoil it for you - but it's good!

Availability: DVD only
Released: 2005
Added to queue: 2/11/2008
Reason added to queue: Added with all those other Asian horror movies, which had been getting on my nerves, but this one was good.

Rampo Noir

This anthology include four vignettes, based on stories by the Japanese author Edogowa Rampo (which is apparently supposed to be an homage to Edgar Allen Poe, if you pronounce it (kind of offensively) right.  Each stars actor Tadanobu Asano.  And each involves sexual encounters that are awkward to watch.  I mean for me at least.

• Mars Canal: no audio.  A man wanders naked through what I assume is supposed to be Mars, but it's green, recalling a pretty violent sexual encounter.
• Mirror hell: I liked this one.  Women keep dying, and the deaths seem connected to these beautiful hand-made mirrors.
• Caterpillar: A woman has to "take care" of her husband, who returned from war deformed. 
• Crawling Bugs: This one was also kind of interesting - a man with a skin allergy becomes a little too enamored with the stage actress for whom he is chauffeur.

Overall, this wasn't my favorite.  

Availability: DVD only

Released: 2005

Added to my queue: 2/11/2008 with all the other Asian horror movies

Reason added to my queue: I was adding a bunch of Asian horror movies