Have smartphones thwarted certain movie scenarios?

For instance, there's many situations in horror films that won't work today...phone lines cut by killer, being lost, being chased, etc. Then there's crime...since people have phones almost everywhere at all times, it's hard to get away with anything. Nowadays you don't even need a witness or a sketch artist...20 bystanders will already have a photo of the guy. And if the criminal has a smartphone, he can be tracked.

Not to mention things like drones, stricter identification procedures, and so on. Modern technology precludes a lot of scenarios.

The solution is to embrace modern technology and perhaps make it the source of evil/threat or alternatively make the bad guy use it to their advantage.

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One strategy is to hang a lantern on it (e.g., the police state spying on our protag with the phone, the evil spirit jumping from phone-to-phone). One of the best moments in Signs was when some found footage (one of those ubiquitous cameras) was played on TV news and we got Joaquin Phoenix's great reaction to it. Found footage has allowed for a cheap verisimilitude without explaining away cell phone cameras. Cloverfield and Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity have made it clear how far this can be pushed to good effect. To go the old-school route, of course, you just put them innna woods with no cell service or a dead battery or the baddie has a blocker or its an old building with thick walls.


Sure, certain scenarios are less plausible now. You can't have a man with no name drifter ride into town in the age of Yelp. On the other hand, this also opens up new possibilities.



Horror breaks with rationality, so there is no need for phones to dispel whatever curse is awakened. As for crime, there are still plenty of people shooting each other and robbing places, so it's just a matter of figuring out how crime plays out in real life (which if still does).

Yeah, the only real way to evade this issue is the lack of cell service or battery power. Which would be plausible in movies like The Blair Witch Project. Though how long can they milk that.

Another scenario that likely wouldn't happen is the car breaking down and being stranded. One because of smartphones and also because cars today don't flood/overheat like years ago.

In The Graduate Hoffman had to race to a gas station, tear a page from its phone book listing nearby churches & then tear off looking for the church. Obviously would make no sense today.

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Indeed, that is now an archaic film-cliche (character rips the page from the phone book in rush to make contact with person of interest).

We’ve gone even further now. What’s a phone book?

Phone books and phone booths are now a thing of the past. There's a scene in the movie A Walk Among the Tombstones where Liam Neesom is researching a past crime by utilizing microfiche. I hadn't seen microfiche utilized in a movie so long that it took me five minutes to remember the word microfiche. The scene took place in the 1960's so it was appropriate.

Have you noticed that old cell phones seem to date films even moreso than landline phones?

The life cycle of cell phones is so short that after just a few years you one and think, "Wow, that's an old ass phone."

I'm making a movie where a guy turns on his smart phone, opens a keypad app, presses "0" ... then asks, "Operator? Can you connect me to Bensonhurst 5 - 6700? And please reverse the charges."

My husband would freak if I threw out the 2 remaining phone books in our house. Even though he has a smart phone to look up numbers.

Totally. A fliptop phone looks so old-fashioned. Even more so than a rotary phone.

Years & years ago I believe you could dial a number to find out what time it was. And another number to get the weather forecast.