Best One-Location Movies

The one-location film is the form's most-disciplined constraint. The screenwriter cannot move the action to a new setting when the energy flags; everything has to be wrung out of the single space. The films that succeed do so by treating the constraint as the structural opportunity rather than the limitation.

Our picks.

The picks

• 12 Angry Men (1957) — Sidney Lumet's debut. The Manhattan jury room.
• Rope (1948) — Hitchcock's experiment in long takes. One Manhattan apartment.
• Rear Window (1954) — Hitchcock again. Jeff's apartment and the courtyard he watches.
• Buried (2010) — Rodrigo Cortés. Ryan Reynolds in a coffin for 95 minutes.
• Locke (2013) — Steven Knight. Tom Hardy in a car driving down the M6 motorway.
• Phone Booth (2002) — Joel Schumacher. Colin Farrell in a New York phone booth.
• 127 Hours (2010) — Danny Boyle. James Franco trapped in a Utah canyon.
• The Hateful Eight (2015) — Tarantino. Snowed-in stagecoach stop in Wyoming.
• Fight Club (1999) — partially — Most of the film is in confined interiors; the basements are themselves the setting.
• Devil (2010) — M. Night Shyamalan (story). Five strangers in an elevator.

What the films share

Almost every one-location film survives because of a strong central performance. Reginald Rose's screenplay for 12 Angry Men is structurally excellent, but the film holds together because of Henry Fonda's lead. Buried works because Ryan Reynolds can carry 95 minutes of close-up on his face. Locke is, in some sense, the most-extreme example — Tom Hardy is the only character on screen, and the entire film is built around his phone conversations with off-screen voices.

The one-location form is also one of the easiest entry points for new directors. Low budget, fixed setting, minimal logistical complexity. Several of the most-respected directorial debuts (Lumet's 12 Angry Men, Hitchcock's Rope as a working experiment) have been one-location films.