A recent thread on the film The Blair Witch Project got me to thinking: that film was set in 1995, the tail end of the era when it was still plausible that three college students would decide to go hiking in the woods, and none of them would be carrying a cell phone.
As mobile phones become ever more prevalent and coverage expands, it seems to me that it will become more and more difficult for books and movies to create the sense of isolation that has fueled much horror and suspense fiction in the past. At the very least, it’ll be necessary to address the absence of such communication in some way, which seems likely to result in some painfully conspicuous cliches (“Damn! The battery’s dead!”). How do you convey the idea that your characters are alone and helpless, if everyone in the developed world has their own portable phone?
If the film relies on the supernatural to provide the horror, one of the ghost’s or monster’s or whatever’s powers could be to cause interference with electrical signals. I could see this being done well, if the director and/or writer is careful with it. Suppose the ghost causes all electrical devices within a certain area around it to go dead, or only produce static. There could be a scene where the heroes are desperately trying to get far enough away to get out of the range of the ghost’s interference, and finally manage to get a signal on their phone, only to have it go dead in their hands as the ghost creeps up behind them…
“Damn. I dropped my cell, and now I can’t get it to do anything but play my ringtone.”
“When the car crashed, I lost my cell.”
IOW, I think that any script that depends upon isolation will be able to maintain that with simple scenes thrown in. Besides, there are always going to be the odd Neo-Luddites out there who will refuse to use such items, too.
“But before you inherit the $1 million, you must spend the night alone in Deathly Manor – and we mean alone, with no means of communication with the outside world.”
“Oh, honey, how romantic. Our own private island. And no one can disturb us for the next two weeks because we didn’t bring our cell phones or Blackberrys!”
“Oh yeah? I can last longer than you on a camping trip with no electronic devices. Care to make a wager on that?”
Use the phone for effect - Ju-on/The Grudge (and the ‘pilot’ film 444-444-4444), as mentioned, and One Missed Call make use of the cell phone to terrorize the victims. Have the villain/monster call, have them cut in on calls in progress, have calls cut off (with or without a good, mundane, reason) before anything useful can be passed on. Particularly useful in supernatural films - calls can come from an invalid, or at least unused, number, for instance - but also usable in mundane situations.
Set the story in an area with bad or no cell reception. (Which makes it even better when the evil spirit rings the victim up.)
Convenient forgetfulness means the characters don’t have their phones when they need them.
Nothing wrong with dead batteries. (And again, that just adds to the spookiness if you have the spirit ring them up.)
False security - they get a call out, but it’s too late, and/or just gets the killer/spirit/curse an extra victim when someone comes for them.
OK? I’ve been thinking of starting a thread to list the recent movies whose plots don’t hinge on a cell phone call; they seem to be rarer and rarer. *The Departed *is a good movie, but I usually describe it as a movie about cell phones.
For that matter, it can be used as a character revealing moment: Couple shows up at isolated resort.
“Are we all unpacked?”
“Just about. Let me put the suitcases away into the closet.”
“Wait, I still need the cell phone charger.”
“What? Isn’t it there with the other incidentals on the bed?”
“Do you see it there?”
“Well, it’s not in the suitcase.”
From here, the writer could give us a first look at marital stresses, or which partner is the scatterbrain, or simply saying: “Dammit, and my hyperj-Phone needs that special charger, I doubt they’re available in this area, yet…” and show us different flaws or quirks of the characters, to make the plot more believable, too.
Then there’s the thriller Cell, where the kidnapped chick is held captive and the bad guy’s destroy the old landline phone in the attic. When left alone, she was able to Mcguyver the broken phone, but it could only dial a random number, which turned out to be just some ordinary guy’s cell phone. The rest of the movie dealt with them keeping the connection established while he tried to track her down. And it included a scene where he had to hold up a cellular store to get a new battery.
Well, there was always that stock scene of the antagonist cutting the phone line…
The modern equivalent could be a fulll moon cameoed-sillouhette shot of the distinctive cell phone tower trumpet mute, dramatically depicting the antagonist scaling the cell tower and destroying it in a dramatic shower of sparks and shorts. Or he could just pull it down with a chain and a 4X4.
Some things would work a lot BETTER. “Miss Jones, we have traced that call and it’s coming from YOUR BASEMENT!!!” never really worked for me, especially back when very few people had a second phone line for his fax or dialup internet connection (hand raised sheepishly, though temporarily). It works (somewhat) better, to a techno nitpicker, as, “Miss Jones, we have triangulated the cell signal/used his phone’s GPS capability and it is coming from SOMEWHERE IN YOUR VICINITY!!!”
I’ll just note that, humorously, a recent episode of the TV show House did the reverse and gave us not only telephone communication but HD webcam access to the South Pole in the middle of winter.
For as ubiquitous as cellphone access might seem to be, anyone who’s been even just a few miles off the coast will tell you that cellphones are paperweights and basic internet access costs $20 for a single basic text webpage.
Actually, wireless communications lend themselves to a much better and hundreds of times more dramatic movie solution than land lines.
Scene: Dark Allley…Killer clips the phone line with nail clippers.
OR
Scene: Isolated cell tower… Killer scales tower and in a feat of superhuman derangement destroys the transmitter physically in a rain of flames and sparks.
Alternately: Killer uses an acetylene torch or rotary multicutter to weaken the tower support and pulls it down with The Monster Truck. He then demolishes the grounded transmitter with a sledgehammer.
It’s ubercreepy because this is one visceral and motivated killer…
Maybe 24 isn’t traditional suspense fiction, but I think it’s suspenseful, and while I’ve only seen the first two seasons the cell phone was key. Where does it work? When does it ring unexpectedly? When do you drop it?
In other words, it’s like any other tool of the genre - there when it serves the plot, frustratingly absent when you need it. Like the basement, as it were.
Sometimes people turn their phones off for whatever reason and forget to turn them back on because they’re fuddle-brained like that.
Other than that, maybe just set the story some place where an American/British/Norwegian/Whatever person’s phone would no longer work, or just where they wouldn’t have it, like maybe the Middle East or Africa.
Actually, having seen Dog Soldiers, I think it’s fun whenever someone does a well-made thriller movie featuring soldiers instead of college students. Yaknow, well-trained, prone to working together, and heavily armed, and oft times STILL getting owned by the baddies due to their sheer baddie-ossity.
EDIT: On the topic of military people, I’ve heard it said that field radios always work perfectly until you need them to work at all…