Trapped in a Bathroom: 30 Films to make you fear using the bathroom again!
You do not want to be Trapped in the Bathroom! These are the most private of places. These are places where we clean ourselves, relieve ourselves, medicate ourselves, and we usually like to do these things in private. With the exception of being with our young children and lovers/mates, we prefer doing our bodily business in the bathroom ALONE. There are large percentages of our time in the bathroom naked or with our pants down. We are vulnerable in there. That’s why we have privacy locks on these doors.
Hey! Don’t come in here! I’m… busy! Consequently, if someone barges in on you when you are… busy… this becomes a frightening prospect. People just don’t do that to other people, unless there is something seriously wrong in play.
Societal norms of the restroom
In public restrooms, as a modern society, we have tried to maintain some of that privacy by having individual toilet stalls, and we even divide the restrooms into gender separations. It has been one of the last vestiges of societal separation. Our political battles at the fringes of polite society prove that we are not quite over this particular issue. So it is safe to say that bathrooms and restrooms are sensitive areas in society.
Thank goodness for indoor plumbing! For the past 150 years or so, we have been the beneficiaries of being able to eliminate our waste and be free of the smells and unsanitary conditions of the outhouse. And as an added benefit we get access to clean flowing water at the turn of a tap. Cleanliness has never been easier than it is today. Now our toilet seats even can warm up.
Privacy and Bathrooms
For movies, this meant that we never saw bathrooms used until 1960. The Hays code wasn’t explicitly written to address the sins of the bedroom. Watch old movies. It isn’t just the limitations of set design that didn’t show the bathrooms and bedrooms, it was the moral code from 1940-1960. Even to this day, the use of the bathroom is largely limited to horror and comedy movies, when they are central to a scene.
It isn’t hard to understand why bathrooms get used as a horror trope. Again, these are our most private spaces. They are also usually small, with only one way out and one way in. They are easy places to set traps. Violent actions within these locations also hit that much harder because this is a violation of safe space. Though it makes little rational sense, oftentimes times people in horror films will flee to a bathroom. Perhaps that’s because there is a lock on the door, but also, more likely, the director knows that it will make you feel uneasy and claustrophobic.
In Horror, factor in the disgusting unsanitary bathroom. Or the outhouse. Raise your hand if you have ever walked into a bathroom, smelled what just happened in there and just turned heel and decided that you can wait a little more. These places can be downright hellish if poorly maintained. Flip the toilet seat in a porta-potty and that will make you grateful for modern indoor plumbing. We have a gut-level repulsion to open piles of human waste, and we’ve all been there. We have also all been in a situation where you have NO CHOICE but to use these awful latrines because… biology isn’t always patient.
Bathrooms can be sexy
The other major element of bathrooms plays into horror’s exploitation playbook. Being naked means being vulnerable. And also ripe for unwanted voyeurism. The shower and bath scenes almost always take advantage to show off beautiful bodies. Horror always has had one foot firmly placed in the exploitation bucket and the roster of films with beautiful women (and Dale Midkiff) taking luxuriating and relaxing baths is lengthy. It is also notable that the movies have also used bubbles to discreetly add some cinematic privacy, but horror does, what horror does.
… and bathrooms can be nasty
For men, the horror lies with the bad habit of peeing (or squatting) without properly checking the bowl first. Ladies raise your hand if you have been the victim of male overspray. This part of the horror is more often played for laughs as something emerging from the toilet comes to attack the unfortunate and oblivious guy taking a whiz. To my knowledge, women have not been subjected to this unfortunate fate in the movies. Readers send me a message if you know of a counter-example.
So let’s get to the list! No more need to do the pee-pee dance, we thank you for your patience. This is by no means a comprehensive list of the trope, but it does capture what we consider to be the best and most effective use of the Trapped in the Bathroom trope.
Psycho (1960)
You literally have to start here when considering bathrooms and horror. This was the first movie to showcase the bathroom, and WOW, what a coming-out party this turned out to be. It took the commercial and political clout of Alfred Hitchcock to pull this off, and the infamous shower scene broke so many boundaries. It took a film of this quality and a scene of this level of craft to usher in one of the great tropes in all of horror. To fully appreciate this moment you should check out the Alexandre O Phillipe documentary 75/52-Hitchcock’s Shower Scene for a full analysis of this important scene from Variety Magazine’s #1 movie of all time.
Shivers (1975)
Shivers did for bathtubs what Psycho did for showers. David Cronenberg has long been associated with parasitic organisms and body horror, and Shivers would put the proverbial Cronenbergian stamp onto this trope in perpetuity. In a move that would influence several of the films to follow in this list, the stunning Barbara Steele (Black Sunday) is one of the residents in an apartment building that is being infected by large parasitic leech-like creatures that turn their victims into violent sexual deviants. While taking a bath to ponder why her husband has been behaving so oddly, she fails to notice a parasite that has worked its way up the plumbing and looking for an opening into a warm body. EWWWWW! This is how David Cronenberg established his reputation!
The Shining (1980)
In the second no doubt about it Hall of Fame Horror Movie on this list, there are actually TWO significant bathroom scenes. The “Here’s Johnny!” moment that makes an appearance every Oscar night (Despite never receiving any Oscars… a shame) and also the Jack Torrance discovery of the beautiful (for the moment) ghost in the bathroom of Room 237. Master class levels of dread, tension, and release, these scenes are two of but many defining moments from The Shining that will be studied by film students forever.
Deadly Blessing (1981)
This is not one of Wes Craven’s best efforts, but it does give us his first try at a bathtub horror sequence. Martha (Maren Jensen) is a widow in an agrarian community filled with zealous cultists. (Think really mean Mennonites.) When trying to get her mind off of her stresses, being imposed on her by the local townsfolk, she takes a bubble bath. Somebody sneaks into her bathroom and dumps a big snake into the tub to try and kill her off. The plot significance is a bit preposterous, as the snake they used isn’t exactly a water moccasin (looks to be a small python… nonvenomous and not dangerous) but you can tell that Craven was going for the sexual threat in a safe space idea here. He’ll deliver a more memorable version of this scene three years later.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
This is the Wes Craven scene you will be familiar with. Again, a bubble bath serves as a mental and physical refuge, but Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) is so exhausted from trying NOT to sleep that a relaxing soak is going to induce nap time. Craven dials back the sexuality from Deadly Blessing a touch here, as Nancy is the proverbial virginal final girl, but the appearance of Freddy’s fingers is frightening on many levels. Both this film and Deadly Blessing took cues from Shivers.
Ghoulies II (1987)
“They’ll Get You in the End… AGAIN!” Our first Toilet Appearance. The first Ghoulies suggested the Ghoulie in the toilet, and Ghoulies II delivered on the promise. When the distraught young carnival owner Phillip Hardin (J. Downing) hides in one of the restrooms. Some people do their best thinking on the loo, and apparently so did Hardin. This little fella isn’t too happy to be shit on. And, as the tagline suggests, Harding got it. In the end. (Rimshot!)
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985)
If any franchise is emblematic of having the token black guy getting dispatched, it is Friday the 13th. Demon (Miguel A. Nunez) is trying to have a private moment when his girlfriend, Anita (Jere Fields) is teasing him by shaking the dingy outhouse, which, reasonably pisses him off. After a bit of fun banter, Anita goes quiet, and then the outhouse really starts to quake. It’s Jason, and he has arrived with a big steel fence spike. Say goodbye to Demon, one of the better characters in the Friday the 13th series. (You might recognize Nunez from his role in Return of the Living Dead, where he played Spider.)
Night of the Creeps (1986)
In what might be described as Shivers Goes to College, (One of the characters’ names is Cynthia Cronenberg, a nice homage…), the students of Corman Collage (another nice homage) are subjected to an invasion of space leeches that jump into the mouths of their victims, turning them into zombies. Chris and his buddy J.C. are running pledge week at Corman, but they uncover the coming invasion. Before they can execute a plan of action though, the mobility-impaired J.C. is overcome by a swarm of space leeches in the men’s room at the University Med Center. What is it about space leeches and bathrooms? There is definitely a trend.
Street Trash (1987)
Street trash has developed a reputation for being sleazy extreme gore, but the most famous scene in it is so Sherwin Williams technicolor absurdity that it isn’t “quite” as nasty as the reputation would suggest. Bruce Torbet plays a homeless junkie who wants to get a vial of the latest and most potent elixir around, a nasty substance known as Venom. He manages to get a bottle of the stuff, taking refuge in the most squalid bathroom imaginable, and a porcelain throne to sit on while enjoying this new potion. It doesn’t take well to him as he disintegrates into a puddle of goo. In his last dying effort to extricate himself by pulling on the chain flush valve above, essentially flushing his own remains down the drain. That sound of a flushing toilet also aptly describes the sensation of watching this movie.
Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988)
Have you ever avoided using a campsite outhouse to avoid the awfulness that is inside it? Sleepaway Camp II has the ultimate death-by-outhouse moment where Angela in the middle of her murderous revenge rampage forces Ally (Valarie Hartman) into the outhouse and drowns her in a sludge of feces and leeches… and enough water that you can hear poor Ally gurgle her last breaths. An awful way to go. Also, a pretty awful movie, but you will remember this scene.
Pet Sematary (1989)
In a trope that is nearly 99% women in bathtubs, we have our first (only?) example of a man in a bathtub horror moment. When Louis Creed (Dale Midkiff) buried his dead cat in the cemetery, he was not ready for the side effects, like the cat throwing dead rats into the tub when he was trying to relax. Clearly, Louis did not take into account the sociopathic change in his feline companion or he would not have buried his dead son there later. Whoops!
Jurassic Park (1993)
When Genarro (Martin Ferrero) abandoned the children in the SUV to take shelter in the outhouse, he assumed that the T-Rex wouldn’t have the predatory instincts to track him down. Rexy made quick work out of the outhouse, leaving a bite-sized treat waiting for him on a handy porcelain snack holder. Munch munch munch! One of the great “He had it coming” moments in monster movies. Nobody roots for the money man.
Scream 2 (1997)
The opening scene to Scream 2 slathered on all the tropes like a fantastic horror cake. Start with the classic (but often overstated) “The black guy gets it first” trope. Add into it the “I gotta go relieve myself ” trope. And on top of that add in the fact that it is adding in the incredibly meta moment of having Scream playing in the theater as Stab and you have a perfect opening scene setup. Omar Epps is Phil, who has dragged his reluctant scaredy-cat girlfriend Maureen (Jada Pinkett Smith) to see Stab only to become said first victim when a knife comes through the bathroom partition when he eavesdrops on some strange whispering. It’s all covered up because the whole audience has dressed up like the Ghostface Killer.
What Lies Beneath (2000)
When Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) discovers by way of being possessed by a ghost, that her husband Norman (Harrison Ford) has not only been unfaithful to her but also murdered the woman he was having an affair with, Norman paralyzes her and sets her up for a staged suicide by putting her into the tub and filling it up. Slow motion dreadful tension ensues. Try seeing how long you can hold your breath while watching this.
Final Destination (2000)
This franchise is all about the idea that you can’t cheat your destiny. Fate will come back with a Rube Goldberg-like malevolence upon those who cheat it. Tod (Chad Donella) gets perhaps the most elaborate staged demise out of anyone, with multiple feints, including tweezers in his nose, a shaving razor, and a wet floor/radio combination. In the decisive moment, a slippery floor and a clothesline wire prove his undoing, garrotting him in the tub. Final Destination likes to serve its deaths like a dance, and this one was a complex waltz of near misses and necessary dominoes.
Dreamcatcher (2003)
Why do some films fail despite having everything going for it? Dreamcatcher is an awful movie with a great director (Lawrence Kasdan), great actors (Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Damian Lewis, Timothy Olyphant, Jason Lee, and Donnie Wahlberg), and a Stephen King story. Usually, this would bode well for a film. Blame a bad story. Blame… the shit weasels. In this convoluted plot, a parasitic alien has been cut loose in the Adirondack woods, and when it gets into your system, one of the things that happen is that you have to poop out the alien after much noisy indigestion, and it looks like a snake/leech, or more colorfully named, a shit weasel. Nightmarish? Yes. Something to be taken seriously? Not so much.
Did that just come out of me? Jason Lee in Dreamcatcher (2003)
Saw (2004)
In a competition for the mankiest bathroom, Saw might be the winner. The Jigsaw Killer captured Adam (Leigh Whannell) and Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) and shackled them to the plumbing in an abandoned industrial men’s room. And, there’s a body on the floor. And a couple of hacksaws. You know the rest of the story. Bathrooms are where you go to clean up. When they are filthy, there is a palpable funk of decay and pestilence, and there is so much nastiness to the main set of this story. Unlike many others on this list, the bathroom is the central location for much of this film, and the place of the greatest nightmare decisions.
Snakes on a Plane (2006)
Even on an airplane, you aren’t safe in the bathroom! When a young couple decides to join the mile-high club, they become some of the first victims of the swarm of snakes set loose on the plane. Done for laughs and titillation, this is actually one of TWO bathroom scenes in Snakes on a Plane as simultaneously a man goes to pee into the vacuum toilet and gets bitten on his junk. The key here is that both of these attacks are initially unnoticed because of the closed environment of the airplane restrooms being apart from the main seating area, where the snakes will make themselves known soon enough. Pure silly B-movie schlock, but quite fun elements of an overall bonkers plot.
Slither (2006)
Hey! More space slugs! And another homage to Shivers, this time executed by then TROMA pro (And Now DCEU Chief) James Gunn. Kylie (Tania Saulnier) is taking, yep, a bubble bath when the space slugs come a calling. For my money, this is the best version of this micro-trope. The production value of the slug animations is top-notch, and they are so phallic and icky! There are so many great individual moments in Slither it’s hard to pick a favorite, but this may be the best bathtub horror moment of all time.
A L’Interieur (2007)
Perhaps no movie scene embodies the concept of violation of a safe space than the fight between Sarah (Alysson Paradis) and a deranged woman intruder (Beatrice Dalle). This is a savage blood-soaked winner-takes-all kind of fight. There are many brutal sequences in this dead list, but maybe none more brutal than this one. A L’interieur has built a reputation as one of the hardest movies to watch, EVER. Clearly, this film is a leader of the French Extremism movement.
Mirrors (2008)
One of the most unheralded great gory moments in all of horror is the moment when Angela (Amy Smart) goes to take a bath and looks into her now haunted bathroom mirror. Her haunted image lingers after Amy turns away and goes to use the tub. The mirror Amy proceeds to tear her own bottom jaw off, causing the real Amy to suffer physical self-destruction in the bathtub. It is a mind-blowing shocking piece of footage that overwhelms the movie and makes everything else about this movie feel downright pedestrian. A literal bloodbath.
Zombieland (2009)
Rule #3 Beware of Bathrooms. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) is an insecure wreck of a survivor of the zombie apocalypse. He has managed to survive by coming up with handy rules to live by when the zombie hordes are all around you. Rule #3 is smart. Doing nature’s duty puts you at risk. Your pants are down. You are in a tight enclosed space, usually with only a single exit. This is an invitation to the undead for a quick grab-and-go lunch.
Alien: Covenant (2017)
Like many things about Alien: Covenant the shower scene looked FANTASTIC. Of course, it did, for it had Ridley Scott as the craftsman director and a big 20th-century budget behind it. Also, like many things about Alien: Covenant, it made NO SENSE. Upworth (Callie Hernandez) and Ricks (Jussie Smollett) are one of several couples who embarked on the colony ship Covenant. They are also among only a handful of survivors who managed to get back onto the mother ship.
Rather than prep the ship and ensure that the ship is safe and clear of dangerous aliens, these two decide to have a sexual quickie in the shower. Factor in that these were relatively minor characters and you get Red Flags x 10. Idiot plot decision, and a scene that I think was provided for its showiness and not for any story reasons. The first two Alien movies largely succeeded because the protagonists were making rational decisions and the power of the production design. This movie had the look down, but it was inhabited by Friday the 13th cannon fodder characters.
It: Chapters 1 and 2 (2017, 2019)
Same bathroom. Same characters. Different actresses. Two movies. Each of the Loser’s Club had a flashback moment that tied them back to their younger selves. For Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis and Jessica Chastain, perfectly cast together) this was a reckoning call back to the middle school girl’s bathroom. This is where the other girls in her class would bully her, pouring wet trash on her. With the adult Bev, the return to the bathroom brings on not just a flood of memories, but a flood of blood. It is a nice reference to Beverly’s other bathroom scene which is a puberty reference. So much blood!
Halloween (2018)
Halloween was primed for a big reboot return. David Gordon Green re-thought the franchise, bringing it back to the basics. Michael was not a mythical being but a dangerous and powerful psychopath. When investigative journalists come to Haddonfield to see Michael in prison, Aaron (Jefferson Hall) and Dana (Rhian Rees) produce THE MASK. This was chum in the water. Without a doubt, the journalist’s time on this planet is now going to be limited. And it all ends in a terrifying scene in a gas station bathroom. When Michael dropped the attendant’s smashed-out teeth over the toilet partition, it was game on! A great scene in a great reboot… sadly squandered in the subsequent sequels.
Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (2018)
Do you want something fun and over-the-top gory and in poor taste? Check out Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich. When a freak storm animates the now highly collectible Andre Toulon killer dolls at a toy convention, it spells serious toy trouble. The storm’s power surge animates the savage little puppets. It becomes clear that the whole convention is in big trouble. In this particular scene, Hezekiel (John D. Pszyk) takes a break from watching wrestling to take a whiz, leaving his Autogyro puppet on the dresser.
The little helicopter puppet lifts off and decapitates Hezekiel: his head plopping into the toilet, mid-urine stream. Amazingly, he ends up peeing on his own severed head in the toilet. Then, his body flops on the bathroom floor. The producers went for the yuckiest vibe possible. The toilet bowl had nasty floaty bits and there was a very yellow pee stream spraying out of his penis. When seen in a full theater (as I had in two desperate film festivals) this had the whole audience roaring.
Crawl (2019)
Crawl earns a vote for the most creative use of a bathroom in a Horror Movie. Haley (Kya Scodelario) and her dad Dave (Barry Pepper) are in the fight of their lives to survive flooding from a powerful Hurricane. And then things go from bad to worse as the storm washed in a pod of hungry alligators let loose from a nearby alligator farm. As Haley moves her way through her flooded childhood home, she gets pursued by an angry gator. In a smart maneuver, she flees into the safety of the bathroom. She wasn’t quick enough to shut the door behind her (the swinging door is a problematic issue in a flooding event) but she managed to trap the alligator in the tub-shower enclosure. Brilliant! A terrific and intense scene where the bathroom size and fixtures surprisingly play to Haley’s advantage.
Candyman (2019)
Leave it to teenagers to do something so foolish as to summon the Candyman demon into the high school restroom on what amounts to an urban legend dare. Candyman, Candyman, Candyman… OK, I had better stop while I’m ahead. No guarantees that that curse doesn’t apply to written as well as verbal summoning. The girls, of course, complete their chant. At first, nothing happens and they all grumble that they had expected something more to happen. The bathroom doors lock. And then he shows up. And then they die horribly. Since they are not the main characters in the movie, it doesn’t pack a story-driving consequential punch. Still, it is a very cool scene in a solid reboot of the franchise.
Hellraiser (2022)
The public restroom becomes a portal to Hell in the pretty good 2022 reboot of the Hellraiser franchise. It’s a brief moment but an important one. Hot mess Riley (Odessa A’zion) has been kicked out of her apartment by her brother Matt (Brandon Flynn). In her misery, she has been messing around with the Lament box in a public park. The puzzle trap fails to secure her blood, so it summons Matt. When Matt discovers an unconscious Riley he also finds the box, which lacerates him. As he washes his wounded hand in the adjacent park restroom, the walls open up into the abyss. Alas, say goodbye to Matt, one of the few redeemable characters in this movie.
Glorious (2022)
Without a doubt, Glorious is the apex and most fully realized of the Trapped in a Bathroom trope. Glorious also put the kernel in my mind to create this dead list. Wes (Ryan Kwanten) is a man suffering a relationship crisis. He is on the road from a painful breakup when he stops at a highway rest stop. There, he has a drunken meltdown and in the process he finds himself trapped inside the men’s restroom.
Wes goes from depressed to doomed, for a malevolent cosmic demigod, Ghat (voiced by J.K Simmons) resides in one of the toilet stalls. This being speaks to Wes through an obscenely graffiti-covered Gloryhole cut through the sides of one of the stall partitions. Ghat has informed Wes that he has been chosen for great things, but only if he will deliver on some highly disturbing tasks. It is a Faustian promise of the foulest kind. We know what that hole might be used for, and so does Wes. Ewwww!
A Summary of the Trapped in a Bathroom Trope
- The trope uses subversion of a safe space.
- It uses the inversion of sanitary conditions for a reaction.
- Bathrooms are closed and confined spaces with a single exit.
- The trope twists societal expectations of restroom conduct.
- If you are a woman, beware of bubble baths.
- There are a lot of space leeches who have an affinity for bathrooms.
- That bathroom privacy lock isn’t going to stop a determined killer.
- If you are a man, look into the toilet before using it.
- You can’t really hide in a toilet stall. They will find you.
- Outhouses are just the worst places to be.