To start with lets looks at outside areas. The three main areas that come to mind for me are: 1. The Street 2. The Woodland areas 3. Open Plains.
Starting with the street, I think that one of two things can be produced by shooting in the street. Should a character be walking alongside people and essentially blur into them, it shows some form of integration with society, in a visual and mental sense, the character has strong bonds and connections to the area and the people they stand with. Even if the audience couldn't see the main character, that would serve as the purpose, he would more likely be ground in as a more common everyday here. Kind of like the audience.
Yet there can be another way to shoot on the street, we can potentially isolate the character as well. One way of doing this would be to give them a strong feature, something that couldn't be ignored like a bright colour or a dark one by contrast. By doing this we can do the opposite of integration, we can show how a character doesn't fit into society. Because of some defining feature or reason he doesn't belong which can in turn give him or her a more interesting edge.
When day turns to night in the forest, the mood quickly turns grim. Many shadows are cast and the tops of trees overhang on the land, blocking moonlight wherever it can. The sharp pointed branches arch this way and swirl sinisterly. The trees themselves block the visual line of what we can see and so we can use this to trick the audience. "Are we really alone out here" Spouts one nerve wracked individual alone in the dark. "I have no i..." A character is quickly silenced. In the dark no one can see where he has gone, while the killer hides nearby skulking behind these silent barriers. Tense, yes?. I like to think this is why many horror films enjoy taking place in these areas, most also incorporate a POV shot to heighten the blindness in the dark and general turbulence of the characters being, both visual and physical.
Open Plains usually serve one purpose, or at least one that works superbly, Open fields can be seen at the start of many movies and most often in TV dramas. But for movies they serve as a method of smoothly starting the film on a high note with something calm, relaxing and visually beautiful. As if what is to follow serves only to intensify this beauty, it doesnt even need to show the characters, it really just has to be near to somewhere that is an important location for the main characters if not only one. The downside of Plains is that they dont make very good shooting areas for long time purposes, the lack of infrastructure removes the chance of an interesting encounter, rain can shift the land to a muddy mess in short moments and isolation reduces the social factors of character intereraction. Essentially the Open plain is like a good starter to a meal, on its own it can be wonderfull, any excess is pointless.
