The ZoneMovies like The Zone
- Key Features:
- Crime, Social inequality, Urban environment, Fear, Paranoia, Violence-moderate, Survival, Community, Class conflict, Youth, Suspense, Isolation
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, suspense-driven
- Target Audience:
- Thriller enthusiasts, Fans of social commentary, Those interested in urban dramas, Viewers seeking suspenseful narratives
- Emotional Arc:
- Fear → Tension → Confrontation
The Zone

Residents of an enclosed neighborhood in the middle of Mexico DF are shocked by a violent crime, and for one resident in particular, young Alejandro, the drama is ratcheted up when he encounters the lone kid who escaped the event and is hiding out within the neighborhood's borders.
The Zone
Cagalera and Moloteco are two teenagers from San Gregorio Atlapulco who are desperate to get out and move up and away from oppressive circumstances. When they hear of an opportunity to buy a spot in the electrician’s union, which could transform their lives, they quickly devolve into the criminal, adult underworld of Mexico City in a bid to buy their freedom.

In the town of Cutter, most people keep to themselves. But when John comes home to find his girlfriend missing, he sneaks into his neighbor's house, finding his girlfriend and several other kidnapped people tied up in the basement. When the neighbor come home, John is forced to get out of the house alive and lead the group to safety.

A young man becomes convinced that the solution to all his problems is to live in jail, and he will do whatever it takes to get it.

Buenos Aires, Argentina. A luxurious van is parked on the sidewalk. A man enters with the purpose of stealing whatever he can find, but when he wants to leave, he cannot. The doors do not open, the control panel does not respond: the van has become an armored box and he is trapped like a mouse.

In downtown Madrid, a series of mysterious gunshots trap a motley assortment of people in a decrepit bar.

Kale has a life most teenagers would envy. He spends his days endlessly playing video games, surfing the net, eating junk food and watching cable. He has complete free reign of the house, and a beautiful young hottie named Ashley has just moved in next door. There’s only one problem—he’s not allowed to leave the house. Kale’s under court-ordered house arrest for three months, and if he takes one step beyond a 100-foot perimeter of the house, his next confinement will be in a real prison.

In the near future, a popular uprising in Mexico City interrupts a wedding held at the home of a wealthy family. After the riots have been quashed, they discover the bride has gone missing and plea with the military to help locate her.

Ten-year-old Nico receives a threatening letter and now his life is in danger. No one seems to believe him except one person that he doesn't know.

Neighbors in a block wake one morning to find they have been sealed inside their apartments. Can they work together to find out why? Or will they destroy each other in their fight to escape?

Two youths, Niño and Compi, enter the world of drug smuggling in the Strait of Gibraltar; while two police officers, Jesús and Eva, try to eradicate the contraband.

Introverted Girona student Nacho meets two delinquents from the city's Chinatown and gets caught up in a summer onslaught of burglaries and hold ups that will change his life.

During an eviction procedure in a troubled area of Madrid, police officer Dani makes a shocking discovery.

A serial killer murders a girl from his neighborhood. The residents begin to suspect him one by one, as he tries to cover his tracks and plans another kill before escape.

A good-natured man has an unexpected deadly confrontation. Instincts kick in to clean up the mess caused in the name of self-defense but does one really get away free after killing someone?

A tough young man, who helps to kick poor people out of their houses, falls in love with a girl. She lives with her father in the building about to be demolished.

A slab of food descends down a vertical facility. The residents above eat heartily, leaving those below starving and desperate. A rebellion is imminent.

Survivors of a nuclear attack are grouped together for days in the basement of their apartment building, where fear and dwindling supplies wear away at their dynamic.

Lucía and her son live isolated from society in a flat place where there’s practically no life. The small family unit formed by mother and son hardly ever receives visitors, and their goal is to lead a quiet existence. At first they succeed, but the appearance of a mysterious, violent creature that starts stalking their small house will put the relationship that unites them to the test.

A middle-aged man in a stagnant marriage, finds his life upended when an attractive young woman and her seemingly abusive husband move in next door.

The story of two men on different sides of a prison riot -- the inmate leading the rebellion and the young guard trapped in the revolt, who poses as a prisoner in a desperate attempt to survive the ordeal.

An independent private security firm arrives at a middle-class neighborhood in Recife, Brazil.

Residents of a small rural town discover that a demon is about to be born among them. They desperately try to escape before the evil is born, but it may be too late.

An unemployed executive is forced to sell his apartment. When he discovers that he still has the keys, he becomes obsessed with the family that now lives there and decides to recover the life he has lost, at any price.

When a mysterious brick wall encloses their apartment building overnight, Tim and Olivia must unite with their wary neighbors to get out alive.

One night per year, the government sanctions a 12-hour period in which citizens can commit any crime they wish -- including murder -- without fear of punishment or imprisonment. Leo, a sergeant who lost his son, plans a vigilante mission of revenge during the mayhem. However, instead of a death-dealing avenger, he becomes the unexpected protector of four innocent strangers who desperately need his help if they are to survive the night.

At 7:19 a.m., on September 19th of 1985, the most destructive earthquake hit Mexico City. Inside what's left of a building, a group of survivors fight for their lives waiting for rescue.

In the future, the inmates of a private underground prison are computer-controlled with cameras, dream readers, and devices that can cause pain or death. John and his illegally pregnant wife Karen are locked inside "The Fortress" but are determined to escape before the birth of their baby.

Two parallel stories about people trapped in illogical endless spaces: two brothers and a detective locked on an infinite staircase, and a family locked on an infinite road... for over 35 years.

A group of juvenile delinquents live a violent life in the infamous slums of Mexico City; among them Pedro, whose morality is gradually corrupted and destroyed by the others.

The air is thick with tension as a military squad proceeds to the foot of a mountain base, where they're ordered to wait for backup and hold their position. The mountain is shrouded in fog and the men are exhausted. They've been fighting guerrillas on enemy turf for some time, and they're worn down by the stress and anxiety of battle. The men don't want to wait; they want to charge up the hill, fearing that their comrades in the base have been overrun by the guerrillas. The squad's leader tries futilely to keep his men in line while dealing with his insolent second-in-command.

A recently cheated on married woman falls for a younger man who has moved in next door, but their torrid affair soon takes a dangerous turn.

Painter Lorenzo's life spirals out of control as he fears his wife is trying to isolate him from their infant son.

Three hooded Eastern-European criminals burst into a home in a Madrid gated community, holding the family hostage in its own home, and forcing the father to empty his credit cards. But the family fights back - brutally.

Something terrible is happening in class 3A at Calmecatl Junior High. No one can leave the classroom until the guilty party is found. This is the device that gives us a glimpse of the ethics, games, esthetics and eroticism of these girl-women. It is not easy to say what the subject is, there are so many: the discovery of sexuality, discrimination, chance, drugs, maternity, traditions, betrayals, power, love. A mural of a complex reality from the point of view of twenty-something women in the skin of 14 to 15 year old girls.

After a mysterious leader imposes his law in a brutal system of vertical cells, a new arrival battles against a dubious food distribution method.

A conflicted youth confesses to crimes he didn't commit while a man and woman aroused by death become obsessed with each other.

A boy escaped from home, listening, crouched in the depths of his hiding place, the cries of the men who seek him. When the game passes, what remains before him is an infinite and arid plain that he must cross if he wants to get away definitively from what has made him flee. His steps will intersect with those of a pastor and, from that moment, nothing will be the same for either of them.

Togo just wants to watch his neighbors' homes, wash their cars and clean up their sidewalks. But the drug traffickers want more from him.

A man on the run from his own sins, finds himself in a small border town in Texas, impersonating a reverend. The town are quickly drawn to the man's unorthodox sermons, but so is a police chief who has his suspicions.

Four teenagers at a British private school secretly uncover and explore the depths of a sealed underground hole created decades ago as a possible bomb shelter.

Cielo is a mother whose teenage daughter is kidnapped in Northern Mexico. When the authorities offer no support in the search, Cielo takes matters into her own hands and transforms from housewife into a vengeful militant.

American corporations are using the North American Free Trade Agreement by opening large maquiladoras right across the United States–Mexico border. The maquiladoras hire mostly Mexican women to work long hours for little money in order to produce mass quantity products. Lauren Adrian, an impassioned American news reporter for the Chicago Sentinel wants to be assigned to the Iraq front-lines to cover the war. Instead, her editor George Morgan assigns her to investigate a series of slayings involving young maquiladora factory women in a Mexican bordertown.

When two neighbours clash, their argument becomes less about proposed building alterations and more about the wider battle between class and social status. The hugely impressive building in question is the only example of a Le Corbusier residential home in all of Latin America, adding to the poignancy of their argument.

The eight years boy Jesús has been living in a crumbling underground facility since he was born with eight survivors of an apocalyptical war: the leader Maria and her lover Pablo; the gays Lucas and Mateo; the astronomer Magdalena and the teenager Ana; the soldier Pedro and the lonely Judas. They are permanently is state of surveillance, threatened by the contaminated mutants The Strangers and once a day they have to lock themselves in their rooms without heating to protect against the dangerous ghosts The Invisibles that attack in the Cold Hour. They cannot go to the surface, destroyed by a nuclear war. When they need supplies, medications and ammunitions, they organize expeditions to a store. When the menace of The Invisibles affects the safety of the group of survivors, they need to reach the surface. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In the heart of a city, the inhabitants of a tower wake up one morning to find that their building is shrouded in an opaque fog, obstructing doors and windows - a strange dark matter that devours anything that tries to pass through it. Trapped, the residents try to organize themselves, but to ensure their survival they gradually succumb to their most primitive instincts, until they sink into horror...

A police brigade works in the dangerous northern neighborhoods of Marseille, where the level of crime is higher than anywhere else in France.

In the near future on a colony of state-of-the-art robots, a private investigator is hired by the colony's creator to bring his missing daughter home.

Chaos consumes a small town when a chemical facility explodes releasing a deadly toxin. Moments after the leak, the town's residents show signs of mutation, causing the military to quarantine the area leaving any survivors helpless and trapped inside. The story follows Jim, a young man isolated within the red zone, as he eludes flesh eating zombies in an attempt to win back his freedom.

After being deported back to Mexico, a man has no choice but to join the vicious drug cartel that has corrupted his hometown in order to survive.

In May of 2020, a standoff between a small-town sheriff and mayor sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico.

The harmony of a seemingly idyllic neighborhood is disrupted when a dog attacks a young girl.

Leyre lives a quiet and comfortable life which ends abruptly when an act of rage of her teenage son leads her to protect him by any means necessary.

When her son's alleged kidnapper is released for lack of solid evidence, a reputable and well-known attorney takes matters into her own hands with unintended and spectacularly disastrous consequences.

Seagal plays a man with a dark and violent past, who seeks revenge for the murder of his son.

After a massive earthquake, only one apartment building is left standing in Seoul, South Korea. Survivors flock to Hwang Gung Apartments, but residents cannot cope with the increasing numbers.

Six years ago NASA discovered the possibility of alien life within our solar system. A probe was launched to collect samples, but crashed upon re-entry over Central America. Soon after, new life forms began to appear and half of Mexico was quarantined as an infected zone. Today, the American and Mexican military still struggle to contain "the creatures," while a journalist agrees to escort a shaken tourist through the infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the U.S. border.

A same-sex couple move to a small town so they can enjoy a better quality of life and raise their 16 year-old daughter with the best social values. But nothing is as it seems in their picturesque neighbourhood. And when Malik sees the folks next door throwing a very strange party, something very shocking has got to give.

Izi's close to escaping The Kitchen, one of London's last remaining housing estates. But when young Benji enters his life, he faces some hard decisions.

The thirteen survivors of a catastrophe by a tunnel's collapse tries to balance their experience trapped along 15 days inside it with their day-by-day outside it.

A shocking assault inspires horrific violence when a group of teens encounters a girl from their school while camping in a remote spot.

Manuel, a Spanish politician whose high-class lifestyle is based on nefarious and illegal business threatens to break his entire party after a newspaper exposes him to the public eye. Rather than admit to any wrongdoing, he decides to sell out his whole party in an effort to avoid jail time. It's a decision that will put many lives at risk.

10-year-old Pixote endures torture, degradation, and corruption at a local youth detention center where two of its members are murdered by policemen who frame Lilica, a 17-year-old trans hustler. Pixote helps Lilica and three other boys escape and they start to make their living by a life of crime which only escalates to more violence and death.

In 2030 the world is in a permanent state of economic recession and facing serious environmental problems as a result of global warming.

A group of people are plunged into a dark, claustrophobic maze, where they must fight to survive, as the outside world watches.

A nightmarish evening unfolds for neighbors David and Robert when they accidentally hit a woman on her bike and flee the scene. While David is increasingly plagued by feelings of guilt, Robert shows no remorse and becomes overbearing and possessive.

A police-escorted prisoner transport supervised by Interpol sets off to Belgrade. The route leads the transport through Pančevo, where they encounter an ecological disaster and infected people who are trying to kill them. Interpol agents Mortimer Reyes and Mina Milius soon realize that their only chance for escape from the zombie hordes lies in allying with the dangerous, mysterious prisoner.

Luis, an 18-year-old Mexican boy with indigenous roots, enters the Heroico Military College with the hope of securing a better future. There, he encounters a rigid and institutionally violent system designed to make him a perfect soldier.

Contact between most towns on Earth has been severed. A small ring-like area in Eastern Europe still has electricity, and maybe even life is being reported from space. What military forces find outside the ring is shocking.

A blackout leaves those affected to consider what is necessary, what is legal, and what is questionable, in order to survive in a predatory environment.

Responding to an urgent call for help, a police officer becomes trapped by the evil spirits of a cursed house.

In a secluded house in a small seaside town live four unrelated men and the woman who tends to the house and their needs. All former priests, they have been sent to this quiet exile to purge the sins of their pasts, the separation from their communities the worst form of punishment by the Church. They keep to a strict daily schedule devoid of all temptation and spontaneity, each moment a deliberate effort to atone for their wrongdoings.

The exact details of what took place while Talib Ben Hassi was in police custody remain unclear. Police officers Jens and Mike are on routine patrol in Svalegården's ghetto when news of Talib's death comes in over the radio, igniting uncontrollable, pent-up rage in the ghetto's youth, who lust for revenge. Suddenly, the two officers find themselves fair game and must fight tooth and claw to find a way out.

Juan and Sonia arrive at a large old house, an ideal place to raise their newborn son. When, one night before going to bed, they check the operation of the monitoring device installed in the baby's room, they discover that someone is sitting next to the crib.

An abandoned child steals to survive and has problems when he decides to steal from the priest who helps him.

A dystopian coming-of-age movie focused on three kids who find themselves in an abandoned amusement park, aiming to unite whoever remains. With dangers lurking around every corner, they will do whatever it takes to survive their hellish Neverland.

Forced underground by the next ice age, a struggling outpost of survivors must fight to preserve humanity against a threat even more savage than nature.

Bobby tries to save himself and his best friend when they are kidnapped on their way home from school.

The story centers around veteran assassin Mark Shields as he tracks down, Pelon, the elusive head of the Salazar Crime Cartel. Through twists of fate, Shields ends up with a local woman, Olivia who is also fighting her own demons for the sake of her daughter. Set in the rich and atmospheric backdrop of Tijuana, Mexico, La Linea (The Line) is full of action and drama.

A poor man becomes a modern Robin Hood, robbing the rich to give to the poor.

Jim Hanson’s quiet life is suddenly disturbed by two people crossing the US/Mexico border – a woman and her young son – desperate to flee a Mexican cartel. After a shootout leaves the mother dead, Jim becomes the boy’s reluctant defender. He embraces his role as Miguel’s protector and will stop at nothing to get him to safety, as they go on the run from the relentless assassins.

One weekend, after years without seeing each other, several friends, over whom hangs the shadow of a murky episode of the past, meet in a house in the mountains. During the first night, a strange incident takes place that leaves them isolated.

A young affluent couple expecting their first child hits it off with the new couple that moves in downstairs, until a dinner party between them ends in a shocking accident.

Julia, a 25 year-old university student, two weeks pregnant, with no criminal record, is sent to prison. Julia murdered the father of her child. This story addresses maternity, jail and Justice; confinement, guilt and solitude; but above all it deals with Julia and her son, Tomas, born inside an Argentinean prison.

A group of Mexican emigrants attempts to cross the Mexican-US border. What begins as a hopeful journey becomes a harrowing, bloody and primal fight for survival when a deranged, rifle-toting vigilante and his loyal Belgian Malinois dog chase the group of unarmed men and women through the treacherous borderland. In the harsh, unforgiving desert terrain, the odds are stacked firmly against them as they discover there’s nowhere to hide from the unrelenting, merciless killer.

Olga discovers the unfinished diary of a notorious killer and becomes captivated by its dark secrets. As she delves deeper, she uncovers a mysterious connection between them, putting her life—and the lives of those around her—in grave danger.

Toro (Spanish for "Bull") is a young con man and the right hand of Romano, a powerful mob boss in Torremolinos, Málaga (Andalusia, south to Spain). After Toro decides to leave Romano to get a life free of crime, his last sting fails, resulting one of his brothers dead and he sent to jail. Five years later, Romano realizes that López, Toro's older brother, is robbing him money from his tourism business and he orders to kidnap Diana, López's little daughter, until this one get back the money. Without options, López visits Toro, now a touristic driver with the third grade prison close to get the parole, who only wants to be free to marry his girlfriend Estrella. When Toro accepts to help López and both meet Romano looking for a solution, Toro ends attacking Romano's men and fleeing with Diana, trying to escape from Romano's revenge. But Romano starts a ruthless searching for they three, meanwhile Toro counts the hours to back the prison according to the third grade...

While Carlos, a banking executive, takes his two kids to school in his car, he gets a phone call telling him that there is a bomb under the seats and he must to gather a large amount of money; otherwise, his car will blow up.

In the aftermath of her husband's death, widow Ramona's struggle to raise her two kids is hindered by the arrival of a mysterious woman with supernatural abilities.

Gloria encounters Francisco, a man whose social veneer betrays a truer self burrowed underneath.

When a hostage rescue mission creates a new enemy, Capt. Guerrero and his elite soldiers must face an ambush by a criminal group.

Nina is an elderly woman who lives alone and feels distressed by the increasing violence in her neighborhood. Amidst conflicts with her neighbors, she decides to film the movement of drug traffickers from her window, hoping to assist the police. After months of recording suspicious activities, her initiative attracts the attention of a journalist, who approaches Nina and offers to support her in her mission.

When cop David is injured in a drug bust gone wrong, his partner Cal chases the two criminals who shot him. They all land at a remote farm owned by troubled vet Eric, and as Cal and Eric plot their defense, more of the gang arrives - along with a wounded David. Outnumbered, the three heroes must use stealth, smarts, and good shooting to take down the drug-dealing mob.

A group of drug-influenced lumpen teenagers from the suburbs of the city descends into the center where they do not belong, where they are excluded. They adopted a brutal method to seize rights that were not granted to them. Unaware of what will happen to them, cheerful and well-to-do university students are helpless in the face of this gun-wielding mob that suddenly raids the bar where they are having fun.

Danny Trejo plays 'Bullet' a tough cop who takes the law into his own hands when his grandson is kidnapped.

After moving into a new neighbourhood, brothers Dane & Lucas and their neighbour Julie discover a bottomless hole in the basement of their home. They find that once the hole is exposed, evil is unleashed. With strange shadows lurking around every corner and nightmares coming to life, they are forced to come face to face with their darkest fears to put an end to the mystery of THE HOLE.

A student moves in with a family that lives in an underground house in the middle of the forest, far from civilization. His hopes of peace and quiet are soon shattered, when it becomes apparent that both the parents and their son have a screw loose.

A psychotic young man returns to his old neighborhood after release from prison. He seeks out the woman he previously tried to rape and the man who protected her, with twisted ideas of love for her and hate for him.

When a small town near the Arizona-Mexico border is wiped out overnight, suspicion falls on the lone survivor. But a roll of photos the survivor took that night tells a different story.

