No signal?
Via John August, I found this illustrating montage that shows how revealing a horror film cliché is when all the examples are juxtaposed together in order. Behold, No signal?!:
I’m almost proud that most of these examples are picked from films I haven’t seen. My main prejudice against the horror genre is the cheap use of tricks, and here they’re under a scrutinizing light. Any other examples of script or image clichés that have been over-used in films? I vote for a revealing montage of all the unnecessary use of “Poetic close-up of hand touching wheat or grass while walking in a field“.
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Cool. But is it even possible to make a modern horror movie and not deal with the phone issue at all? These days “everybody” has a cell phone… to avoid plot holes, isn’t it a necessity to explain the viewers why the person in danger isn’t just picking up his/her cell phone? Nevertheless, this is a great montage, and I have to admit I’ve seen quite a few of thesese movies (a lot of them are pure crap, others guilty pleasures or well made genre films).
Trond, I guess you’re right – the cell phone has become an essential part of global life and culture, so I agree that solving its existence dramatically is something every (horror) filmmaker has to do. But as the montage above shows, not every writer manages to find a believeable solution.
I refuse to believe that one cannot find a more original way to remove (or include) cell phones from the equation.