21st century entrapment: 10 modern films with trapped heroes

As claustrophobic sci-fi thriller 'Storage 24' hits UK cinemas from June 29th, we look back at this millennium's finest films with entombed protagonists:

Cast Away (2000)
Robert Zemeckis reunites with his Forest Gump star Tom Hanks for a survival story. Hanks’ character, Chuck Noland, gets caught in a horrific storm and crashes into the pacific. As the sole survivor, he washes up on a deserted island and remains trapped there for four years. Eventually he builds a raft and takes it out to the ocean and is finally spotted.  

Panic Room (2002)
Jodie Foster and a young Kristen Stewart form a mother-daughter duo in this film. Burglars break in to their house expecting to find money, but instead they find the mother and daughter sleeping upstairs.  Trying to protect themselves, the mother and daughter trap themselves in the panic room for safety. However, the money that the burglars want happens to be in that room. The odds are against the mother and child as they are trapped in the room and need to leave in order to get medicine for the child’s low blood sugar.  



Phone Booth (2002)
Stuart Shepard (Colin Farrell) is smooth New York publicist who uses the same phone booth every day to call his girlfriend.  One day he picks up the ringing phone and is told that if he hangs up, he will be killed.  The caller displays a small red light from a laser rifle to prove that this is for real.  Shepard remains trapped in the phone booth until the caller gets what he wants.



John Q (2002)
Denzel Washington takes on the role of Quincy Archibal, a father whose son becomes diagnosed with an oversized heart and cannot receive a transplant because insurance will not cover it.  Desperate to save his son’s life, Archibal decides to take hostage and trap all the patients and doctors in the hospital until the doctors agree to perform the transplant on his son.



Open Water (2004)
This Sundance film is based on the true story of two married scuba divers left behind by a careless boat crew in open water. The couple is trapped in the shark-infested waters with no way back to shore. This chilling story presents a realistic picture of being stuck in the middle of dangerous ocean waters while fighting to survive.



Saw (2004)
This remains one of the best scary movies to emerge over the past decade. It begins with two men trapped in a cell together. Both men are given the option of either rotting in the cell forever or cutting off their foot as a way of punishment for the dishonest lives they lived.  Being trapped in a room and given a lose-lose situation is the basis for all the victims of the Jigsaw.



Hostage (2005)
The film stars Bruce Willis as Jeff Talley, a former hostage negotiator. As he is seeking a quieter lifestyle, he is drawn into the most dangerous situation of his life. The plot revolves around three young criminals attempting to steal a car from a wealthy accountant when the situation takes a turn for the worst.  The thieves take the accountant’s family hostage and trap them in the house until they get what they want.



127 Hours (2010)
The true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston's remarkable adventure was captured by James Franco. On April 26, 2003, Ralston, a 27-year-old outdoorsman set out on a day of adventure in Utah, alone and without telling anyone where he'd gone.  A fallen boulder crashes on his arm and he becomes trapped for 127 hours. Eventually, he cut his own arm off to survive.



Buried (2010)
Ryan Reynolds is fearless as he plays Paul Conroy in the hair-raising film about an American truck driver in Iraq taken hostage. He is placed in a coffin, buried alive and trapped for almost the entire 95 minutes. He shows the fear of being buried alive and the amount of panic that sets in when he left completely trapped underground.



Storage 24 (2012)
This is bound to strike fear in Londoners in particular. Storage 24 is a sci-fi horror about a military cargo plane that crashes into the London leaving its “highly classified contents” strewn across the city.  The film’s main characters Charlie (Noel Clarke) and Shelley (Antonia Campbell-Hughes) are meanwhile at Storage 24, dividing up belongings after their breakup. Suddenly the power goes out and they find themselves being hunted by a mysterious predator in a maze of corridors.  Find out if they escape or not June 29th when Storage 24 hits UK cinemas.

 

Storage 24 is in UK cinemas on Friday, June 29th. Check out the trailer HERE.

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