Would Devil be an example of a contained Thriller too? I would say the appeal of a contained thriller is for it to be that Thrilling! And engaging as well. It should exploit the fact that there are places we feel comfortable with/ or are familiar with... our house, ATM, Elevators, etc...and give us a feeling of fear or terror for those locations. That's why they are so successful. We feel safe in these places, but after watching the movies, we are scared of those places. Psycho is a classic example too, in that regard.

Rope!

Several prison movies would count. About 80 to 90% of the action in Stalag 17 takes place in a single barracks hut. Some might not consider it a thriller but you can't tell some people anything. Sidney Lumet's The Hill (starring Sean Connery), Jacques Becker's Le Trou and Don Siegel's Escape from Alcatraz are also good examples. I don't think The Shawshank Redemption really counts, though. That's a different sort of movie.

The original Sleuth all took place in the same house. Some might consider it too arch and genteel to be a thriller but again I'd have to disagree (I haven't seen the remake).

A movie like Crimson Tide -- really, most submarine movies outside of The Hunt for Red October, which doesn't really qualify -- also has to count here.

Like submarines, spaceships are a good place to set a contained thriller. Alien is the first that comes to mind but there are others. Like 90% of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was shot on the same set, according to Nicholas Meyer.

The appeal, I think, is that it really forces the characters into conflict with each other. There are no diversions, no side plots. It makes the writer work that much harder to define the relationships in interesting ways, because it really is easy to get bored when not a lot is changing, locations-wise. There's a natural claustrophobia to a contained thriller, a sort of pressure cooker situation where a defined world with a defined set rules becomes part of the thing the characters have to overcome.

It's like an argument where you want to leave the room or else you're going to explode. In a contained thriller, you can't leave the room.

Hitchcock certainly liked the contained thriller. In addition to the aforementioned Rear Window and Rope, there's Lifeboat, The Lady Vanishes, and (if I remember right) Dial M for Murder.

Of course, Die Hard was technically a contained thriller, yes? Even though contained in that film meant a huge skyscraper, it was so influential, the genre was basically called "Die Hard on a..." for a good decade.

I think Joe nails it with the pressure cooker component. Contained thrillers tap into our fear of being trapped in a place. When the crap hits the fan, people turn on each other instead of working together, break up into factions, make things worse for one another, so you are really trapped with your worst enemies.

"Saw"