No Signal: A Montage of Hollywood Horror Cell Phone Cliches
The man behind the amazing I’m Not Here to Make Friends reality TV montage, is back with a brand new viral video that pokes fun at one of the most overused horror movie cliches of the past decade: the disabled cell phone. Technological advances have always been at odds with bad guys in horror flicks, continually making it more and more difficult for a character to be totally isolated and cut off from the world. Most screenwriters seem to handle this in the laziest way possible, by inserting a scene where the victims attempt to make a phone call, only to find that they don’t have a signal.
While in some cases I agree it is a plot element that needs to be addressed, you can see that after a while it gets to be pretty damn repetitive. Time to get creative! Massive props to Rich Four Four for another masterful editing job that must have taken quite a bit of work.
Comments (9)
Best ones are when the sequels use the same element. Like Wrong Turn and Wrong Turn 2.
Although I found the last few ones to be less cliche than the first ones. Like Funny Games, the protagonist purposely pushed the phone into the water. It wasn’t that the phone just didn’t work.
Posted by Itchy-Finger on September 24th, 2009Haha that was entertaining.
Posted by modesilver on September 24th, 2009So, Weird Web Wednesday’s are officially dead now, right? I mean, if you’ll post video’s like this one by one, isn’t this what we are to assume? Jay’s really dropping the ball here. I really liked that segment. I hope it comes back.
Posted by Matt on September 24th, 2009Yeah I’d say it’s dead, but I’ll continue to post any decent movie-related videos that I stumble across. I don’t really go out of my way to find funny videos on YouTube anymore as of late.
Posted by Sean on September 24th, 2009I don’t know what’s worse: technology being used as a cliche or the fact that I’ve seen many of these *terrible* movies. Here’s to ya’!
Posted by Patrick McShittypants on September 24th, 2009@ Yeah I’d say it’s dead
dead like yer cel phone. Kazaam!
Posted by Rusty James on September 24th, 2009The best part of that video was seeing some of the terrible / terrific horror titles that have come out lately. I’d heard of Donkey Punch but it’s still hillarious. Best title of the montage goes to The Scary Woods.
Posted by Rusty James on September 24th, 2009I do think they missed a great opportunity by not showing the exact same scene in both Funny Games movies (in the original it’s just a cordless. I think that still counts)
Funny Games does not belong here.
Posted by Henrik on September 24th, 2009Modern tech really has thrown a wrench into suspense genres. This reasonable excuse can be contrived but it’s so real people accept it. I’m a much bigger fan of the murderee forgetting to charge the battery and having a dead phone … plus that’s foreshadowing so it’s literary.
Posted by Ian on September 24th, 2009Leave a Reply