Dumbest Modern Horror Trope Is An Unfortunate Necessity


By Robert Scucci
| Updated

Modern technology has left horror filmmakers stuck having to address cell phone usage, creating one of the most infuriating movie tropes I’ve ever encountered. Think about how many protagonists could be spared if they had a working GPS, 911 on speed dial, or even a “deep focus” playlist on Spotify that they could use to control their breathing while using an earbud on the sneak so they don’t get caught hiding in a closet. This relatively new horror movie trope rears its ugly head in some way, shape, or form, often to the detriment of the storytelling, because cell phone usage has to be addressed or there wouldn’t be any conflict if filmmakers ignored the elephant in the room. 

Ditching The Cell Phone

horror movie cell phone trope

After watching The Conference and The Mouse Trap, I noticed a pattern in modern horror movies that I can no longer ignore, which is the trope involving characters acknowledging the existence of cell phones, and their willingness to give them away so they could be left defenseless when things start to heat up. 

Both films have identical exchanges to address the horror movie cell phone trope, but they’re handled quite differently. 

The Conference, which is set during a work-related team building retreat in a rural location, handles the problem somewhat gracefully. Before a day of raft-building and zip-lining, the group leader urges every participant to put their cell phones in a safe box, which makes the horror trope believable in this context. I’m willing to suspend some disbelief because I’ve been on stupid work trips like this, and nobody wants to drop their iPhone into a lake and pay out the ass for a replacement. 

The same exact trope is handled in The Mouse Trap in a way that makes me as a viewer feel like the characters quickly shoehorned in a quick exchange to address the cell phone trope just to keep things moving, as if to say, “hey, we’re obviously living within the fiction of a slasher, so let’s all put our phones in a bag, and lock it up, making it completely inaccessible before we all get murdered.” 

While both of the above movies fall into the horror comedy genre and shouldn’t be taken too seriously, they use the same cell phone trope with wildly different results; the former exchange is believable, while the latter feels like a copout that takes me out of the movie. 

It’s Your Fault You Got Mauled To Death, You Stupid Idiot!

horror movie cell phone trope

One of the most satisfying (and horrifying) horror deaths I’ve ever seen was in Backcountry, when Alex (Jeff Roop) handles the cell phone trope in one of the most idiotic ways possible. Worried that his girlfriend, Jen (Missy Peregrym), would spend too much time answering work-related queries while hiking in the deep wilderness where he plans to propose to her after finding his favorite childhood lake (without a map, of course), Alex secretly snatches her cell phone and leaves it in their parked car before trouncing into the forest where bear attacks are a legitimate danger that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Spoiler alert, Alex isn’t the outdoorsman he thinks he is, and he gets his face ripped off. 

Backcountry handles the horror movie cell phone trope in a believable way, but the film also undermines itself because every horrible thing that happens to the couple in the woods is 100 percent Alex’s fault, which made me yell “she’s not gonna marry you now!” the second I realized they wouldn’t be in danger if Alex didn’t ditch the cell phone.  

While Alex had good intentions and just wanted to have a perfect romantic getaway with his girlfriend, he ultimately got ripped to shreds, leaving his cell phone-less girlfriend lost in the woods with no access to help. If Jen just brought her cell phone with her, and said “hey, we have no bars,” I wouldn’t have to think that Alex’s death was the result of being hoisted by his own petard. 

Let The Antagonists Do The Heavy Lifting

horror movie cell phone trope

Straight Edge Kegger had the right idea when the home invaders used a signal jammer to disrupt everybody’s cell phone service within a radius they were certain nobody would escape from. Every character at the house party with a cell phone all run into the same problem simultaneously, and Brad (Cory Kays) confirms through a quick line of dialogue that the attackers jammed the signal. The horror movie cell phone trope is quickly addressed without taking the viewer out of the film, the bloodbath begins, and bing, bang, boom, lots of people die. 

Fear, Inc. also does a great job working cell phone usage into its horror plot without being a straight-up nod to the trope, but rather integrating the technology into the storytelling to heighten its suspense. After hiring the titular company, who turns his life into a supposedly simulated slasher nightmare (for fun), Joe calls 911 on his cell phone, not knowing that his device had been programmed to redirect his call to Fear, Inc, causing him to inadvertently reveal his whereabouts to the very people who are trying to kill him. 

Classics And Period Pieces Don’t Have To Deal With This

One of the reasons I’m drawn to horror movies set in the early aughts, late ‘90s, or earlier is because the cell phone trope is a non-issue. Back when land-lines were still ubiquitous, all a killer needed to do was cut the power, and boom, no phones. It was done so seamlessly that you didn’t even have to think about it. 

There’s a serial killer, or killers, on the loose? Well, they’re going to make a menacing call from a payphone while talking through a balled up sock, and if they move quickly enough, there’s no way for the authorities to track them down. Could you imagine if Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode had a direct way to contact Dr. Samuel James Loomis (Donald Pleasence) in Halloween? The film would be over before it even started. 

Luckily, horror movie cell phone tropes weren’t an unfortunate necessity back in the day. 

That’s right… the power gets cut, mom and dad aren’t home, and a masked murderer is working his way through every room in your house. Not a cell phone in sight. Just people living in the moment. 




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