There are a few settings that crop up time and time again in the horror genre thanks to their natural creepiness, including dilapidated houses (that usually turn out to be haunted) and the woods (who knows what’s lurking under all those trees?!). Although not quite as common, I’ve always found underground settings—be that a cave system or a manufactured structure—to be just as ripe with sinister horror potential, whether it’s the ominous, claustrophobic feeling of walls closing in, or the darkness, the stale air, the sensation of being buried alive…
I was put off of the idea of ever going spelunking many years ago thanks to “Ted the Caver” (one of the very first creepypastas) and I’d definitely prefer never to be stuck in a windowless underground bunker. But I love to see these environments on screen, so here are five films (plus a little bonus) that make brilliant use of their subterranean settings.
The Descent (2005)
A group of women travel to the Appalachian Mountains to go spelunking in a popular cave system. Not long after entering the cave, the passage collapses, leaving them unable to retrace their steps and find their way back out, but they think that if they just sit tight they’ll be rescued. Then Juno (Natalie Mendoza) admits that she actually brought them to an unexplored cave system to add an extra thrill to their adventure, meaning help isn’t on the way. With no choice but to move forward, they set off into the unknown.
The group deal with panic and injury as they struggle through the dark, dangerous tunnels. Just when they think that things can’t possibly get any worse, the situation suddenly gets way worse. The film is scary enough when it’s a straightforward survival story, but it reaches new levels of terror when the secondary horror element (which I won’t reveal here) is introduced. The Descent steadily builds the tension before exploding into a high-adrenaline, blood-soaked nightmare.
Day of the Dead (1985)
In George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead, zombies have overrun the world. In the hope of figuring out how to cure the undead contagion, a few scientists have holed up in an underground missile bunker, along with a small military regiment for protection. But while the fairly sizeable bunker offers safety from the hordes of zombies outside, it also serves as a massive cage when the soldiers decide to make a grab for power.
Day of the Dead expertly balances fun zombie action against the human drama playing out in the confined space. The gory special effects—crafted by Tom Savini—are delightfully creative and viscerally gross. But the film rises above simply being an entertaining display of blood and guts thanks to the great characters, who are the true beating heart of the film.
The soldiers are infuriating and terrifying as individuals, but as a collective they speak to the dangers of unchecked military power. While Dr. Sarah Bowman (Lori Cardille) and her take-no-shit attitude feels like a bastion against this aggression, Dr. “Frankenstein” (Richard Liberty) and his unhinged experiments show that there can also be a dark side to science. And then, of course, there’s everybody’s favorite zombie, Bub (Sherman Howard), who is as heroic as he is endearing.
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
10 Cloverfield Lane is the kind of movie that continually keeps you guessing. Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) wakes up in an underground bunker after having been in a car crash and she’s told by the two men there, Howard (John Goodman) and Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), that the surface of the Earth is now uninhabitable. Michelle is obviously suspicious and both she and the audience are continually torn between seeing Howard as her savior or her captor.
The three leads give incredible performances, making the sustained periods of tension—which occasionally explode into flashes of intense action—feel charged with electricity. While not everyone seems to appreciate the hard left turn the movie takes at the end, I personally love how the genre and tone shift switches things up.
The Platform (2019)
Spanish-language film The Platform is set within a vertical prison—well, technically, it’s a “Self-Management Center”—where each floor houses two inmates. A platform full of food descends through a rectangular hole in the ground, stopping for just two minutes on each floor. Those at the top are able to eat as much as they like in those few minutes, and the inmates on the floor below get their leftovers, and so on until those nearer the bottom get absolutely nothing. As would be expected, chaos ensues.
While it isn’t certain whether the windowless building ascends into the air or descends into the ground, the claustrophobic effect and feeling of depth is the same. The film’s name in Spanish is El hoyo, which literally translates to The Hole, and while that may just be a reference to the hole that runs through the center of the building, for me, it also brings the underground to mind.
The film’s social commentary on inequality and greed is as blatant as a pie to the face, but that doesn’t make the sensation of being trapped—whether by the physical walls or, as the metaphor has it, by your station in life—any less terrifying.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)
Police are investigating a multiple homicide in a house when they discover the body of a young woman who seems to have no connection to the crime scene. With no idea of who she is or how she died, they hand her over to Tommy and Austin Tilden, father and son coroners (played respectively by Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch), who work out of a morgue located under their house.
The father and son team get to work but are quickly baffled by the body of this Jane Doe, with various contradictions making it impossible to identify her cause of death. From there, things spiral wildly out of control.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe has it all when it comes to horror: the setting is incredibly unsettling, the autopsy is realistically graphic, the atmosphere is tense, and there are a few intense jump scares. But for all of that, credit also has to go to Olwen Kelly for her stock-still performance as the corpse. As the plot progresses, her frozen facial expression gets scarier and scarier each time director André Øvredal cuts back to it.
Bonus: “Graveyard Rats” from Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities (2022)
Although not a feature-length film, the “Graveyard Rats” episode of Cabinet of Curiosities absolutely fits the subterranean bill. Based on the 1936 short story of the same name by Henry Kuttner, “Graveyard Rats” sees grave robber Masson (David Hewlett) becoming increasingly irritated with the rats that keep dragging the dead away before he can get his hands on their valuables.
One night, an at-the-end-of-his-rope Masson decides to pursue the rats and ends up crawling through labyrinthine warrens in pursuit of the gold and jewels. As you would imagine, this subterranean environment is suffocatingly claustrophobic. And as if that’s not terrifying enough, Masson also has to contend with the various horrors that are perfectly at home deep underground. I actually quite like rats, but the ones in this episode are the exception!
Have you got any recommendations for horror films that are set mostly or partly underground? Let me know your favorite subterranean scary movies in the comments below!
