10 Most Claustrophobic Movies Of All Time

10. Panic Room (2002)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 76%

Many critics compared the high-tension narrative of David Fincher's Panic Room to the work of Hitchcock, with the majority of them meaning it as a compliment. While some complained that Panic Room was too commercial for their liking on the back of Fincher's 1999 adaptation of Fight Club, most reviews applauded the director for a film that achieved so much despite the constricting dimensions of the premise.

The film stars a typically spunky Jodie Foster as a thirty-something divorcee who purchases a brownstone in New York City. When intruders break into her home soon after, Foster and her daughter (a pre-Twilight Kristen Stewart) are forced to take advantage of the special feature that came with the property - a hidden panic room. Trapped in the cold, claustrophobic space and unable to reach outside help, the mother-daughter combo enter into an ever-evolving game of cat and mouse with the home invaders.

A movie that could have ended up a formulaic popcorn thriller managed to avoid the many genre trappings by employing a director on top of his game. Fincher utilizes atmosphere as a function of architecture here, with the usual functions a filmmaker relies on either purposefully overshadowed or stripped away entirely. The film is a tale of psychological gamesmanship made all the more tense for the viewer by never straying too far from the plausible and believable performances all round.