6 Movies That Will Give You Serious Claustrophobia

F*ck tight spaces. No, really, f*ck them. For some people, just the idea of a tight space is enough to cause them to break out in a sweat and start to panic. The idea of being buried alive or trapped in rubble is one of those thoughts that is so awful, you try to keep your mind from even imagining it. But that is where film steps in. You see, for many of us, we like going to see a movie that lets us live through an experience we may fear in real-life. Arachnophobia may not be one of the scariest movies ever made, but if you ask someone who hates and fears spiders, it damn well is. The six movies on this list are to people with claustrophobia what Arachnophobia is to people who hate spiders. These are the movies that will make you feel like you are running out of air while you're watching them. These are the movies that make it feel like the walls are pushing in, all around you. These are the movies for people who hate small spaces, but love facing what they hate. So, without further ado, here are 6 movies that will really mess with people who have claustrophobia. Take a deep breath, folks.... The Descent The Descent is one of the best horror movies from the last decade or so. Relentlessly scary and brutally claustrophobic, it puts you in the company of six women spelunking and checking out an underground cave system that has never been explored before. That, alone, would have worked great as a movie in itself. But once they get deep enough underground, they encounter a race of what can best be described as bat-men. Don't let the name fool you, though. These things don't fight crime and wear capes. They eat people. But the element that made the horror of the The Descent work so well was the fact that you felt like you were in that cave system with those women, squeezing yourself through cracks in the rocks that seem to be shifting and changing around you. Add to that the growing tension that they are being hunted and cannot make a sound (as these creatures see with their ears using echo location), and you have a movie that will make people with claustrophobia truly suffer. And even if you don't have claustrophobia, The Descent is still pretty damn terrifying. Brake So in the movie Brake, we find secret service agent Jeremy Reins (played by Stephen Dorff) waking up inside of a specially rigged trunk of a car (as seen above). He's been drugged and kidnapped, and has no idea what is going on outside of the trunk he is in. At first, he thinks it is a prank, or the result of some gambling debt he may have. But soon, a far more sinister plot is revealed. Jeremy is mentally tortured in an attempt to extract some very important information. A big part of that torture comes from the simple fact that he is in an enclosed space and at the mercy of the people who seem intent on doing him (and America) some harm. It is a film that could have very well been a play, as it is mostly a one-man show taking place in one location. But that is the thing about claustrophobia. The very idea of being in the trunk of a moving car, being told terrible things are happening outside of that trunk (I won't ruin any of the twists and turns for you) and having nothing you can do about it is a claustrophobe's nightmare. I know you think "Dorff in a trunk" and nothing about that seems appealing, but trust me, this movie was definitely a pleasant surprise. Spoorloos (or) The Vanishing The Vanishing is the American remake of a 1988 Dutch-French film called Spoorloos, and if you have the chance, do not see the remake. I don't mean to insult it, but they Americanize the ending and in the process, ruin the entire point of the fucking movie. I feel the need to tell you now, the rest of this entry will contain major spoilers for this film. The kicker is though, the movie is over 20 years old, so I am not going to feel that bad about spoiling it. Spoorloos follows man and a woman who are arguing (as couples are oft to do). The woman needs something and goes into a store, but she never comes out. Her boyfriend gets obsessed, but no one ever finds anything or gets any answers, and so he takes it upon himself to get the answers about his wife's whereabouts and well-being. Though the entirety of the movie will not affect people with claustrophobia, the ending will fuck them up and never leave them. Here is where the SPOILERS start pouring in. Our protagonist ends up finding a man who says he knows what happened his wife. But there is fine print. If he wants to know what happened to his wife, he will have to endure what she endured. If he can do that, he can get his answers. He agrees, gets drugged, and wakes up in a coffin, buried alive. This is where the original ends. Of course, in The Vanishing, his new girlfriend finds him and digs him out, just in time. But in the original, when he realizes that is his fate and that was his wife's fate as well, it not only screws with you if you hate small spaces, but it screws with you in general. It's just so terrifying and dark because shit like that really happens to people. Buried Okay, so I know spending two hours in a box with Ryan Reynolds seems like an awful idea, but as far as movies for claustrophobes go, this one is way up there. You see, unlike most of the other movies on the list (except maybe Brake), Buried gives you no reprise. It starts out in a coffin, and all takes place within a coffin. You never come up for air. Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, an American truck driver working in Iraq who wakes up to find himself buried alive inside a coffin. All he has with him are a cell phone, a pen, a glowstick, a knife, a flask and a flashlight. He has no idea why he is buried alive, who did it, or where he is. Eventually, he finds out that some terrorists want some money and blah blah blah. The plot isn't amazing, but the movie is really suspenseful and for me to tell you anymore would ruin it. I can tell you this, though. Buried makes it feel like the air in your own house is getting thinner and thinner. You literally begin to feel like you are trapped in there with Paul. Honestly, this is a damn-near impossible film for claustrophobes to get through. It is that effective. As Above, So Below Let me start this all off by saying that I did not like As Above, So Below. I think it had a good premise and some real potential, but squandered it with mild scares and a fucking unforgivably bad ending. That said, it did one thing right. It ripped off the "trapped in a tunnel" moments and feelings from The Descent quite well. There are a few scenes when the characters have to crawl through small cracks and their surroundings begin to cave in around them. Sure, you've seen it before, but I swear, cave-in scenes can be scary, even in the most cliched of horror movies. Seriously though, outside of that aspect, this film sucked and I refuse to talk about it anymore. So let's move on. The Abyss The ocean is strange, as it's a massive place that can still manage to make you feel trapped and claustrophobic. No movie has moments that capture that better than The Abyss (though Sanctum is a nice B grade version). The Abyss is director James Cameron RIGHT BEFORE he became the sort of "Michael Bay James Cameron" he is now. Seriously, there are scenes in The Abyss that are a claustrophobe's worst nightmare. I mean, even the masks they wear fill up with water. That is like claustrophobia squared. But the kicker was the scene when Lindsey drowns willingly so that Bud can survive and bring her up to the platform where there is a chance he can bring her back to life with a tense, but cheesy CPR scene. Though the ending goes idealistic on us (which is a running theme of most American movies), the actual drowning scene is up there for the best "I can't breathe while watching this" moments in cinema. You know what, enough talk though, how about I just end this article with the scene and fuck everyone up (especially those of you who are claustrophobic)?