Not every great film needs a globe-trotting plot or sweeping landscapes. Some of the most gripping stories ever put to screen unfold entirely within the walls of a single room, building, or stretch of road, proving that limitation, in the right hands, is its own kind of power.
The New Times puts together a lineup of six movies set in one location that show what cinema can do when stripped of almost everything except tension, performance, and script:
Rear Window
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly, Rear Window follows a photographer confined to a wheelchair in his apartment who becomes convinced he has witnessed a murder through the window overlooking his courtyard.
Released in 1954, the film is one of Hitchcock's most celebrated works and a landmark of suspense filmmaking. The entire story plays out from a single apartment, yet it manages to construct a complete neighbourhood of characters, relationships, and moral questions.
It remains essential viewing for anyone interested in how mise-en-scène can do the work of an entire world.
Phone Booth
Directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Colin Farrell, Phone Booth follows a publicist who answers a ringing phone booth in Manhattan and is told by a sniper that he will be shot if he hangs up or steps outside.
Released in 2002, the film was shot in just twelve days and is set almost entirely within and around a single phone booth on a New York street. What begins as a thriller gradually becomes a psychological dissection of ego and dishonesty.
Rope
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Farley Granger, and John Dall, Rope follows two young men who strangle a classmate and then host a dinner party with the body concealed in a chest in the room, entertaining guests including the victim's family.
Released in 1948, the film was shot to appear as one continuous take and unfolds entirely in a Manhattan penthouse apartment. Hitchcock described it as an experiment in pure cinema technique, and its claustrophobic tension grows unbearable precisely because the audience knows what the guests do not.
Locke
Written and directed by Steven Knight and starring Tom Hardy in the sole on-screen role, Locke follows a construction site manager driving alone through the night to London, handling a collapsing marriage, a professional crisis, and a stranger's emergency entirely through phone calls.
Released in 2013, the film takes place entirely inside a car in motion. Hardy carries every scene alone, his face lit only by dashboard glow, yet the film crackles with the kind of emotional violence that most ensemble dramas struggle to produce.
Buried
Directed by Rodrigo Cortés and starring Ryan Reynolds, Buried follows an American civilian contractor who regains consciousness to find himself buried alive in a wooden coffin somewhere in Iraq, with only a lighter and a mobile phone.
Released in 2010, the film never leaves the coffin. Not once. It manages to sustain ninety-five minutes of full-screen tension entirely within a box, using sound design and Reynolds' performance to carry the viewer through mounting dread.