Certain genres of fiction depend on forcing the characters into some kind of enclosed space they cannot leave at will. The plot of these usually depends on the tensions among the characters and their efforts to get out.
The different settings of this kind are usually strongly associated with particular genres. Examples:
- The submarine: Home to an entire sub-genre (owch!) of war films. Archetypal example: Das Boot.
- The space ship/station: Often seen in sci-fi horror, like the Alien films or the System Shock games.
- The underwater base works much like the above. The film The Abyss and the game Bioshock feature such locales.
- A sub-type is the sunken/capsized ship on which the heroes are trapped in air pockets and must make their way out. The Poseidon Adventure is the archetypal example.
- The Arctic base: Also similar to the space station. Seen in The Thing from Another World and its more-true-to-the-book remake The Thing.
- The mansion isolated by adverse weather: Extremely common in murder mysteries.
Dungeons And Dragons (and
Dungeon Crawl games in general) come to mind. The third edition justifies this trope, pointing out that dungeons are actually a convenient way to place characters. Furthermore, a dungeon can be imagined as a diagram of a scene-based adventure, with rooms as key encounters and corridors as travels between scenes. Therefore most
RP Gamers refer to any setting as
dungeon.
Note that the setting of a
Bottle Episode does not count as an Enclosed Space unless the characters are
forced to remain where they currently are. Compare
Locked In A Room and
Locked In A Freezer.
Examples:
Film
Literature
- The Michael Crichton novel (and movie of technically based on the novel) Sphere featured the underwater base version.
- I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream does this in an underground complex (inescapable because it's the only habitable place on Earth).
- The only reason that the crime in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express was not a complete success is that the train was blocked by immense snowdrifts, making movement impossible for several days and allowing Hercule Poirot to investigate and solve the crime.
- Again from Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None / Ten Little Indians is set entirely on "Indian" Island, which is isolated from the outside world on account of bad weather and (?) a holiday on the mainland. As the people on the island are murdered one by one, the sense of terror in isolation grows.
- Arguably, much of ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'' takes place in an enclosed space, with that tent which the Power Trio occupies, and which they magically fortify and isolate every time they set up camp, not to mention the fact that for 90% of the book, if Harry is seen by the outside world, their mission is caput.
- One of the Haruhi Suzumiya light novels is set in a mansion where they are trapped not only by bad weather but by an alien god that can warp space and time.
Live Action TV
- In an episode of Robocop: The Series, the title character is thrown into a trash compactor by a group of thugs. He escapes through sheer force of will, although it takes a third of the episode to accomplish it.
Tabletop Games
- The game Earthdawn justifies a large number of dungeon-like structures in the game world with its backstory of humanity driven into underground shelters by a rising tide of eldritch horrors swarming the world, a tide which has subsided enough to allow some of the survivors to venture forth — and explore/loot the shelters of those who didn't make it.
Video Games
- The Chzo Mythos makes use of this trope in all of its four component games. In the first, you're stuck in a mansion. In the second, you're stuck on a spaceship, in the third you are trapped in a Hell Hotel, and finally the fourth which takes place in a underground complex.
- The third game, Trilby's Notes, is being rather sadistic about it. You can go outsite the hotel, but if you try to walk away from it, you will always come back, presumably because of the evil influence insite the hotel.
- If you play the tie-in Interactive Fiction for the fourth game, you will learn that there is a perfectly safe exit behind the locked door in the room with the security desk and the petroleum barrel. Theo, the Player Character, remains unaware of this throughout the whole game, and never gets around to ask Trilby, a character capable of cracking ANY lock, to open the door.
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