Attic movies

Attics are known for being awkwardly shaped spaces with exposed rafters, difficult-to-reach corners, and hard to access. They can be safe havens or places of threat, so what are they in the movies?

Attic movie number one: the 2009 teen comedy Aliens in the Attic with Carter Jenkins, Austin Butler in his film debut and four alien invaders preparing an invasion of the Earth! 

Attic movies 2: Toys in the Attic – George Roy Hill’s toned-down, opened-out 1963 film version of Lillian Hellman’s play about two old New Orleans spinster sisters, Carrie (Geraldine Page) and Anna Berniers (Wendy Hiller), who love their kid brother Julian (Dean Martin). 

Christopher Jones.

Attic movies 3: The provocative 1968 Swinging Sixties sex comedy drama Three in the Attic stars Christopher Jones as womanising Paxton Quigley, who swears fidelity to all three girls he’s dating. 

Louise Fletcher.

Attic movies 4: Flowers in the Attic (1987) is the bizarre tale of a disturbed mum (Victoria Tennant) of four sweet kids and her even more deranged mother (Louise Fletcher), who hides the children in the attic.

Attic movies 5: Black Christmas (1974): A group of sorority sisters gather to celebrate Christmas break, but there is something terrifying in their sorority house attic.

Attic movies 6: Peter Medak’s 1980 Canadian film The Changeling is a scary and effective chiller. George C Scott is excellent as musician Professor John Russell, who moves from New York into a Seattle old dark house after his wife and son are killed in a car accident.

Attic movies 7: Beetlejuice (1988) features the cinema’s craziest attic with a miniature of the town Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis) live in. They die in a car accident and call on the help of the demonic Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) when the ditzy Deetzes move in.

Attic movies 8: The Birds (1963) climaxes in a terrifying scene in which Tippi Hedren is trapped with killer crows in one of cinema’s creepiest attics. Hedren said she was misled when mechanical birds were swapped for real ones at the last minute.

Attic movies 9: Kate Hudson stars in the slick and creepy 2005 horror movie The Skeleton Key as live-in carer Caroline Ellis, who is given a key that unlocks every door, including one to a sinister attic room with occult objects.

Attic movies 10: Danny Boyle’s cinema directorial debut Shallow Grave finds shy chartered accountant David (Christopher Eccleston) losing his mind and making the attic his home and surveillance place. He bores holes in the attic floor to spy on folk coming and going, and goes spare when his doctor girlfriend Juliet (Kerry Fox) begins an affair with journalist Alex (Ewan McGregor).

Attic movies 11: Elisabeth Moss stars in The Invisible Man (2020) as Cecilia, who runs from her abusive lover, Adrian, who then apparently takes his own life and leaves her his fortune. But Adrian has faked his own death and has been hiding in the attic…

Attic movies 12: Sarah Michelle Gellar stars in the 2004 horror film The Grudge. An American family moves into a Tokyo home where Kayako was murdered in the attic, but her evil spirit is there, out for revenge. Kayako curses those who stay in her home, bringing them up to her attic to die.

Attic movies 13: ‘Master of the Thrill’ Dario Argento’s iconic 1977 Italian Gothic supernatural horror movie Suspiria takes its gruesome place as one of the scariest attic movies in cinema.

Attic movies 14: The 2015 Christmas horror comedy Krampus is based on the demonic character from Austro-Bavarian folklore that dispenses vengeance and wrath on the naughty. Gifts hidden in the attic come to life and try to maim and kill a US family.

Attic movies 15: Sinister (2012) takes its place as one of cinema’s creepiest attic movies. Ethan Hawke stars as a true-crime writer who discovers a box in his attic containing reels of Super 8 home movies that puts his family in mortal danger.

Attic movies 16: Millie Perkins stars Anne Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank, the real-life story of two Jewish families who hide out in a confined Amsterdam warehouse attic for two years during the World War Two Nazi occupation of Holland. 

Attic movies 17: Melissa Gilbert is excellent as Anne Frank in director Boris Sagal’s strongly cast, stalwart, moving 1980 TV movie The Diary of Anne Frank, remaking the 1959 feature film The Diary of Anne Frank.

Attic movies 18: Another of cinema’s creepy attics plays a most important role in the reason Ralph Fiennes’s character The Tooth Fairy kills, in Red Dragon (2002). 

Attic movies 19: She’s in the attic! Kim Basinger is confined in an unknown attic, kidnapped at gunpoint by a nasty gang, led by an evil cop (Jason Statham), who smash the phone landline, in the 2004 thriller Cellular.

Attic movies 20: Hurd Hatfield stars in the 1945 film The Picture of Dorian Gray as the beautiful young man who unwittingly makes a pact with the Devil to keep his youthful beauty while his portrait in the attic shows the ravages on his face and body.

Attic movies 21: Dorian Gray: Ben Barnes is perfect as the hedonistic, corrupt young Dorian Gray in Ol Parker’s smart, sensual 2009 film of Oscar Wilde’s only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Attic movies 22: The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971): Simon Williams has a good role as Peter Edmonton, who sneaks into the attic at night and is attacked by a creature with a furred claw. He tries to hack it with a knife but the Judge bursts in and finds Peter has severed his own hand.

Attic movies 23: Divine decadence with Helmut Berger as the perfect, beautiful, debauched-looking Dorian Gray (1970). Richard Todd plays sensitive artist Basil Hallward, who paints Dorian’s portrait that ages horribly in the attic while Dorian remains unaltered.

Attic movies 24: Malcolm McDowell (as Lord Henry Wotton) and Ethan Erickson (as Dorian Gray) star in the 2003 film Dorian [Pact with the Devil], updated from Oscar Wilde’s only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray about an ambitious young man who sells his soul to the devil, ageless while his portrait ages horribly in the attic.

Attic movies 25: The 1953 thriller mystery film Man in the Attic stars Jack Palance, who is well cast and relishes his meaty role as a Jack the Ripper-style serial killer suspect, a mysterious lodger in a London house in the 1880s.