Silo, Apple TV’s dystopian drama, set in an underground bunker, is as claustrophobic as it is riveting. With its gripping mysteries, gradually unraveling plot, and a constant feeling that someone is hiding the truth, it transcends the sci-fi genre while making the walls feel like they’re closing in around you.
If you’re a fan of this type of tense, immersive sci-fi, there’s a host of films that also capture the same claustrophobic tension that makes Silo so addictive. And, like Silo, many of them leave you guessing until much later in the game.
10 Cloverfield Lane
The safest place on Earth might actually be a prison
10 Cloverfield Lane is likely the movie that’s most directly comparable to Silo, as it perfectly recreates the atmosphere of paranoia in a subterranean bunker. In it, a young woman survives a car crash and wakes up confined underground, where a stranger insists he has saved her life. According to him, the outside world has become uninhabitable, although there’s a distinct possibility that he might also be a dangerous captor.
Like with Silo, we are left constantly questioning the reliability of the information that our protagonist is being fed. Every conversation feels loaded with hidden motives, and every glimpse of the outside world raises more questions than it answers. We are constantly asking whether the bunker is a safe haven or a prison, even as new evidence emerges, and this is a feeling many Silo fans will be familiar with.
10 Cloverfield Lane
- Release Date
-
March 11, 2016
- Runtime
-
104 minutes
- Director
-
Dan Trachtenberg
- Writers
-
Josh Campbell, Matthew Stuecken, Damien Chazelle
- Producers
-
J.J. Abrams, Lindsey Weber
- Prequel(s)
-
Cloverfield
-
-
Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Michelle
-
John Gallagher Jr.
Emmett
-
Douglas M. Griffin
Driver
The Platform
A vertical prison where society literally eats itself
Silo is a series about class divisions buried underground, and The Platform takes this metaphor and literally turns it on its head. Set in a bleak, towering vertical prison, food descends from the top floor to the bottom, and the lower you go, the more difficult it is to survive. To shake things up, prisoners are rotated to different floors each month, so their place in the social hierarchy constantly shifts.
While the premise is simple, The Platform’s themes of oppression, human behavior under tightly controlled resources, and a system built around inequality also ring true for Silo. It is an uncomfortable watch, permeated with moral tension and combined spaces, and entirely suffocating throughout.
Moon
One man’s lonely job becomes a devastating conspiracy
Where most claustrophobic sci-fi stories involve tightly packed spaces, Moon achieves the same effect with an overwhelming sense of isolation. Here, our protagonist, Sam Bell, has been working a mining contract on the moon, the lonely silence of space broken only by the voice of his companion, an AI assistant. Close to the end of his tenure, something happens that completely changes everything he thought he knew about his mission.
Like Silo’s lead character, Juliette, Sam goes to great lengths to understand why reality no longer makes sense, as layers of corporate secrecy are slowly peeled away. There is little action here, as explosions and spectacle give way to mounting tension and psychological dread. With echoes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, it also shows that some of the best sci-fi mysteries happen inside an isolated workspace.
Oxygen
Ninety minutes of pure claustrophobia inside a locked chamber
Silo has rare moments where characters are trapped in deep maintenance tunnels, and Oxygen turns this scenario into an entire 90-minute movie. Here, with shades of Aliens, a woman wakes in a cryogenic medical pod, except that in this instance she has no memory, the oxygen supply is depleting, and her only assistance is — once again — a frustratingly accurate AI assistant.
Impressively, nearly every scene takes place inside the pod, yet we remain engrossed as the mystery continues to evolve. The film is expertly paced, as subsequent revelations change our understanding of her situation without letting up on the tension. Oxygen most certainly lives up to the description of “suffocating,” both literally and figuratively, yet its true genius lies in its ability to keep us hooked.
Oxygen
- Release Date
-
May 12, 2021
- Runtime
-
100 minutes
- Director
-
Alexandre Aja
- Writers
-
Christie LeBlanc
- Producers
-
Franck Khalfoun, Grégory Levasseur, Noomi Rapace, Vincent Maraval, Brahim Chioua, Laurence Clerc, Noémie Devide, Christie LeBlanc
-
-
-
-
Laura Boujenah
Alice Hansen
The Last House
What if reality itself is the walls of the prison?
Netflix’s recent sci-fi offering starts out as an unsettling mystery before morphing into something far stranger. The Last House is centered around a family that, for reasons I won’t reveal, is confined to their home. Their bizarre reality only grows stranger as suspicion mounts that the world around them has changed beyond recognition.
This is a compelling pick for Silo fans, as their confinement is only half of the equation. The real horror comes from the realization that their known universe, beliefs, and understanding of their situation may have been manipulated. The Last House is a quieter, more philosophical sci-fi, and the reveal still leaves much unanswered, but it’s a compelling example of the genre, with palpable tension throughout.
The Last House
- Release Date
-
August 7, 2026
- Runtime
-
110 minutes
- Director
-
Louis Leterrier
- Writers
-
Matthew Robinson
- Producers
-
Jenno Topping, Kori Adelson, Louis Leterrier, Oly Obst, Peter Chernin
Cast
-
-
-
Riley Chung
Ruth (8 Years Old)
-
Noah Alexander Sosnowski
Graham (12 Years Old)
The best sci-fi prisons are forged in secrecy
There’s a far greater connection between these five films than confined settings alone. Like Silo, each traps people in situations where information is limited or carefully controlled, whether in a prison, bunker, remote moonscape, cryo-pod, or even reality itself. While the tension is created by confinement, it’s the hidden truths and gradual reveals that keep you spellbound. If Silo’s suffocating drama is your thing, these movies deserve a place at the top of your watchlist.