The hijack drama 7500, recently released on Amazon Prime, takes claustrophobia to new heights, with the entire film taking place in a cockpit. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a co-pilot who finds himself locked in the control booth, with the hijackers threatening to kill the passengers unless he lets them in. 7500 is among a clutch of films which has exploited the potential of claustrophobia as a cinematic tool to create a heightened sense of drama. Many of these films have done well at the box office. Might it be that the fear and panic they arouse call out to something deep in the human psyche?
Buried (2010)
Being buried alive is a recurrent nightmare for many people. For truck driver Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds), the nightmare comes true when he finds himself in a wooden coffin, after getting ambushed by terrorists in Iraq. Unless he pays a ransom of $5 million, he will be left to die in the coffin. You might think things could not get worse, until explosions damage the coffin and it slowly begins to fill with sand. And then – wait for it – a snake slithers in. Perhaps a good time for Conroy to “think out of the box”.
Room (2015)
This is a searing tale of a child born out of rape to a woman held captive in a room for seven years. Brie Larson plays Joy Newsome, who is trying to teach her five-year-old son Jack about the outside world. Jack does not know how to conceive of life outside the wardrobe where he sleeps each night and the lavatory cistern in which he floats paper boats. Room is a rude reminder that the turquoise blue of the ocean and the sun-kissed splendour of the mountains are not ours to take for granted. The film, based on Emma Donoghue’s book, won four Oscar nominations.
Locke (2013)
It is not every day you drive one-and-a-half hours to be with your ex-girlfriend as she gives birth, making 36 phone calls on the way. Well, it was that day for construction foreman Ivan Locke (Thomas Hardy). One minute, Locke is soothing his apoplectic wife as he confesses his infidelity, and the next, there is steel in his voice as he directs his colleague to prepare for a concrete pour. Spoiler alert: By the end of Locke, you might overdose on Hardy’s face, having sat through 85 minutes of watching it in various close-up shots.