What are the best movies shot in single location?

By Sreejith Kamalanayanan

I have come across this question very recently. I already knew some of the top movies that easily falls into this category. But on second thought, it struck me that there is an ocean of movies that satisfies this criteria.

I mean, think of most of the horror movies. Almost all the horror movies were shot mostly on a single location. Think of the apartments in Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion. Think of the haunted mansions of most of the supernatural films. Yea, the list goes on.

Anyway, as a professional movie expert I was forced to answer this query on Quora. The below are some of my picks for the best movies shot on a single location:

Rear Window(1954)

Alfred Hitchcock has made some best movies that are set within a limited space. Among them I admire Rear Window the most.

The movie is a murder mystery and a surveillance thriller. The story of Rear Window concerns about a professional photographer named Jeff (James Stewart) who is confined to his apartment room thanks to a broken leg.

As Jeff cannot move, his eventful life suddenly turns boring. However, he finds a new hobby he later becomes obsessed with-observing his neighbors through his camera.

Things go awry, as he starts suspecting that one of his neighbors might have killed his nagging wife. Jeff, then closely follows the neighbor's every move and solves the mystery with the help of his girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly) and nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter).

Rear Window is a classic suspense thriller and one of the best movies directed by the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock. The single-location setting enhances the effectiveness of suspense.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

The Hateful Eight is Quentin Tarantino's first complete political allegory that puts the contemporary American society into his dissection table. He brings the entire multicultural-America into a stagecoach stopover called Minnie's haberdashery.

The Hateful Eight is conceived as a Western that takes place after the American civil war. The plot is about eight strangers who seek refuge in Minnie's Haberdashery to escape from a blizzard.

The Haberdashery is a metaphor for contemporary America. And the eight strangers who hate each other is a nod to the hate politics currently at work in America.

Panic Room (2002)

David Fincher's minor masterpiece Panic Room is essentially a home invasion movie. So, by default the movie is set in a single location.

The movie is about a mother, daughter duo played by Jodie Foster and Kristen Stewart seeking refuge in the secret Panic Room inside their house while a criminal trio (Jared Leto, Forest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam) attempt to break in.

The Raid: Redemption (2011)

The Raid is an Indonesian action film that mostly takes place inside an apartment. The movie is about a raid conducted by a 20-men Police team on an apartment in Jakarta. Most of the tenants in the apartment are criminals skilled in martial arts.

The police team suffers a set back as the criminals start attacking them in a brutal way. The raid then turns into a desperate struggle for survival.

The Raid is directed by Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans. Evans conceived the idea of The Raid while filming a documentary about martial art form Pencak Silat in Indonesia.

The Raid was an international hit which spawned a sequel titled The Raid 2, which became a success at the box office.

The Devil's Doorway (2018)

The Devil's Doorway is a horror movie directed by Aislinn Clarke, which does some serious probe into the establishment called the Irish Catholic Church. The movie is a disturbing take on the authority of the church.

The Devil's Doorway is conceived as a found-footage horror film. The entire movie is set inside an asylum secretly run by the Church called Magdalene Laundry. The church kept prostitutes, orphans, pregnant woman, mentally unstable women in the Magdalene Laundries.

The asylum reflects the buried sins of the church. The movie, implicitly conveys that the church is the real devil here.