Cinema of Confinement draws on a number of key psychoanalytic concepts from the works of Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Zizek, Joan Copjec, Michel Chion, and Todd McGowan to identify and describe a genre of cinema characterized by spatial confinement. Examining classic films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Rope and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, as well as current films such as Room, Green Room, and 10 Cloverfield Lane, Connelly shows that the source of enjoyment of confined spaces lies in the viewer's relationship to excess.
“Using cinema to explain the relationship between space and lack, Connelly provides an important theoretical model for more broadly interpreting the spatial limits of desire in our new media environments.”
--Matthew Flisfeder, University of Winnipeg