Movies Set in a Single Room

The location scout had the day off.

Entries
10
Category
Film
Updated
  1. A stark white room with eight desks, each holding a single blank sheet of paper and a pencil, a digital clock on the wall.

    10. Exam

    Stuart Hazeldine · 2009

    Eight job candidates, one windowless room, 80 minutes and a question paper that appears to be blank. Hazeldine's debut cost $600,000 and plays like a corporate assessment day designed by a sadist, which is redundant.

  2. The cramped inside of a wooden coffin lit only by a lighter flame and a cell phone screen.

    09. Buried

    Rodrigo Cortés · 2010

    Ryan Reynolds is a contractor in Iraq who wakes up in a coffin with a lighter and a phone, and the camera never leaves. Shot in Barcelona in 16 days for $2 million; by the last day the box was filling with real sand. He has said he never wants to do that again.

  3. A grimy tiled bathroom with a rusty chain, a bathtub, a small cassette player and a hacksaw on the floor.

    08. Saw

    James Wan · 2004

    Two men chained in a filthy bathroom, the only set built for the shoot. Made in 18 days for about $1.2 million, nearly went direct-to-video, then made $104 million. Leigh Whannell wrote it, starred in it and did his own stunts because the money ran out.

  4. A cozy cabin living room with packed moving boxes, a crackling fireplace and a stone hand axe on the mantel.

    07. The Man from Earth

    Richard Schenkman · 2007

    A professor tells colleagues at his farewell party that he is 14,000 years old. Star Trek writer Jerome Bixby finished the script on his deathbed; it was shot in eight days for $200,000. The producer thanked pirates for spreading it on BitTorrent. Bold strategy.

  5. A car dashboard at night glowing with a phone screen, streaks of motorway lights through the windshield, a hard hat on the passenger seat.

    06. Locke

    Steven Knight · 2013

    Tom Hardy alone in a BMW on the M6 for 36 phone calls, shot over six nights with breaks only to swap camera cards. Olivia Colman, Andrew Scott and Tom Holland are only voices. A thriller about pouring concrete, and it works. The car counts as a room; we checked.

  6. A cheap motel room bed with a small tape recorder, a beer can and a camcorder on a tripod pointed at the door.

    05. Tape

    Richard Linklater · 2001

    Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Robert Sean Leonard in a Lansing, Michigan motel room, in real time, settling a high school grievance on a $100,000 budget shot on digital video. Stephen Belber adapted his own play. The minibar did not survive.

  7. A white-tablecloth restaurant table for two with half-finished plates, two wine glasses and a burning candle.

    04. My Dinner with Andre

    Louis Malle · 1981

    Wallace Shawn and André Gregory talk over dinner for 111 minutes about theater, meaning and a Polish forest. Set in Café des Artistes, shot in a vacant Richmond hotel over two weeks. The Simpsons made it an arcade game. Somehow the game sounds less fun.

  8. A dim emergency dispatch desk with a headset, a glowing monitor and a red call light blinking.

    03. The Guilty

    Gustav Möller · 2018

    A demoted Copenhagen cop works an emergency call line and tries to solve a kidnapping by phone without leaving his desk. Shot in 13 days, it was Denmark's Oscar submission and got a Netflix remake with Jake Gyllenhaal. The original had the better headset.

  9. A carved wooden chest set with candlesticks and a buffet of plates in a penthouse, a painted Manhattan skyline glowing behind the window.

    02. Rope

    Alfred Hitchcock · 1948

    Hitchcock's first Technicolor film, staged in one penthouse as a run of takes up to ten minutes long, with half the cuts hidden by pushing into someone's back. Two men host a dinner party on top of the chest holding the guest they murdered. Excellent hosting, terrible people.

  10. A long jury table with twelve wooden chairs, scattered ashtrays, a broken desk fan and a switchblade knife stuck in the tabletop.

    01. 12 Angry Men

    Sidney Lumet · 1957

    Lumet's first feature, shot in under three weeks for $337,000. He started with wide lenses above eye level and slowly went longer and lower, so the jury room literally shrinks as tempers rise. It flopped in theaters and became a civics class staple. Same thing, really.

Honorable mentions

  • A glass phone booth on a busy city street at midday, the receiver dangling, a red laser dot on the glass.

    Phone Booth

    Joel Schumacher · 2002

    Larry Cohen pitched a man-trapped-in-a-phone-booth movie to Hitchcock in the 1960s and solved it decades later with a sniper. Shot in about 10 days; Kiefer Sutherland replaced the original caller's voice in post. Delayed to 2003 after the D.C. sniper attacks.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A long hotel hallway with four doors ajar, a bellhop's cap and a room service cart abandoned in the middle.

    Four Rooms

    Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino · 1995

    Four directors, four hotel rooms, one bellhop played by Tim Roth on New Year's Eve. It holds 13 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and won Madonna a Razzie. The lesson is in the title: three rooms too many.

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