10 Most Claustrophobic Movies Of All Time

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

Ryan Reynolds stars as Paul Conroy, a civilian truck driver who falls victim to a group of bandits in the isolated Iraqi desert. Paul witnesses his colleagues being murdered before he is knocked out with a rock and regains consciousness inside a wooden coffin, with nothing but his lighter and his Blackberry on him. As his phone's battery and his supply of oxygen begin to run out, Paul needs to conquer his anxieties if he is to stand any chance of surviving.

While Rodrigo Cortés' film might be small in terms of premise and production, Buried made a huge impact, not only with critics but with anyone even remotely wary of small spaces. The film had its detractors pre-release, with many of the opinion that it was simply a gimmick film waiting to be stunk-up by Ryan Reynolds, though those people were wrong on both accounts.

The bulk of the film is a tightly shot anxiety-fest that equated to the stuff of nightmares for sufferers of claustrophobia, but it offered more than a simple gimmick. Despite the obvious limitations imposed by the premise, Cortés manages to keep tension building until the dying seconds, and star man Ryan Reynolds delivers a perfectly weighted performance that makes us feel as though we going through the ordeal alongside him.