10 Horror Movies Set In Only One Location

Not to be confused with 2017’s limp Emma Watson-starring attempted satire by Dave Eggers, 2015’s Circle is a taut psychological thriller with an ingeniously simple set up: fifty people awake arranged in the titular circles in a featureless dark room—and when one attempts to escape, they’re killed by a beam of light. And another one bites the dust every two minutes, with the denizens of the eponymous circle unable to move but soon learning they’re able to decide which of them will be next to endure this brutal fate.

What follows is a tense and original string of unbearably intense debates between the survivors over who deserves to survive in a set-up which the filmmakers admitted effectively amounts to a horror movie remix of the classic one-location legal thriller 12 Angry Men. Reminiscent of 2020’s more extreme and unapologetically satirical Netflix hit The Platform, this twisty thriller may be more subtle in its interrogation of groupthink and social norms, but it’s no less unsparing in its condemnation of many characters for their inhumanity and shameless self-interest.

Still, not like we come to horror to be reminded of society’s reliable sturdiness, and this one-location thrill ride is as unsettling as locked-room sci-fi thriller mystery horrors get.

Well, this and the aforementioned Cube.