Trapped!...

This article talks about how one of the author's favorite techniques of horror writing is the bottleneck. It is basically a device where the victims are trapped within something and stuck, while the murderer or killer is lurking around his prey. It also provides a nice limit with which you're characters or victims can stay in. For instance he says, "If the tale takes place at an ice-locked Antarctic base, like John W. Campbell’s classic “Who Goes There?” we don’t have to worry about the victims running from locale to locale, each requiring another description, and tiring the reader’s patience." He is basically pointing out how the bottleneck is one of the oldest and most useful tricks in horror writing.