Horror and Technology

I remember when cell phones began to get popular and pervasive. As a fan of horror movies, I said to myself "well, that's the end of a lot of horror stories!"

With cell phones, it doesn't matter if you're stuck at camp or in a creepy house across town - you have a phone! You can just call the cops! Or your friends or parents to come and pick you up!

(between you and me, I may have not said these things, or even thought them to any real extent. But let's just pretend, okay?)

In the classic "When A Stranger Calls", the shocking twist of where the calls are coming from is not a shocking twist at all! And more than that, the caller's name shows up when they call you, so a lot of creepiness and mystery is taken out of it.

For a while I believed (or so I am going to claim) that it would be awkward to find ways to make cell phones not work for some reason in every horror story to prevent an easy out/lifeline for the characters.
Unless there was some supernatural force at work to block the calls (which could work, but couldn't be used in EVERYTHING), then the isolation and danger inherent in horror would be lost.

It's interesting to know that as of Scream (an early horror movie that used cell phones), storytelling has evolved to be scary in our always-changing technological world.

That world has changed a LOT since Scream, as well - but it's no less horrific in the right context.

The fact that we put so much of our lives out there for anyone to see, and the ease with which sinister types can fake their identities and stay anonymous means there is no shortage of horror stories (true and fictional) that can be told in the new modern age!

And so it will continue, horror stories evolving and mutating forever and ever.

I don't know anything!

Have a good one!

-Banes