Isabel Pinedo and Tasha Robinson tackle similar subjects in the genre of horror. Pinedo’s Recreational Terror provides a more in-depth look at the themes in classical and postmodern horror films, while Robinson’s Modern Horror Films Are Finding Their Scares in Dead Phone Batteries focuses on the use of one trend in particular: the useless cell phone. These two articles provide a great backdrop for one another and highlight one of the key changes of society in the twenty-first century.
Cell phones have played an interesting role in the horror genre since their creation and massive proliferation. Their faulty use in horror films has gone from being a trope to a cliche, but has recently seen some innovation in their use, as pointed out by Robinson in her article for The Verge. In Pinedo’s article, she mentions how many great horror films invoke a sense of fear by disconnecting the protagonist from the rest of the world. This was done by use of a foreign setting in the classic horror films, but the postmodern era saw more blurred connections between the subject and the rest of society.
Cell phones help to create a weak connection to the rest of society in horror films. Simply removing them by clever use of plot devices allowed many of the early postmodern films to help create this feeling of isolation. This is the kind of isolation that comes in The Strangers, Get Out, or Jeepers Creepers. This was how the broken cell phone trope became cliched, however, but filmmakers in the twenty-first century capitalized on increased smartphone and cell phone ownership rates.
Pinedo’s article, though thorough, only covers trends up until the mid 1990’s. What she did not get to include in her article was the rise in smartphone prevalence and subsequent rise in technology based horror films during the twenty-first century. The anthology series Black Mirror immediately comes to mind when thinking of the next step in subversion. The show doesn’t treat technology as a trope to be played with, but it treats technology as an antagonist of sorts. This kind of opens up a conversation about how our technology really does affect our psychology with regard to how we think about and interact with death.