Friday, November 4, 2011

BIQ Guide To Horror Clichés: Dead mobile phone battery.

In the 10 to 15 years I’ve been using a mobile phone I reckon I’ve been caught out with a flat battery maybe once or twice. But in the world of horror cinema nobody ever recharges their mobile phone battery, ever.

I know the "dead battery" cliché is BS because, in the real world, I regularly see teenagers in a trance like state staring and pocking at their mobile phone like they are giving a small rodent a shiatsu massage. I steadfastly refuse to believe it’s not charged and they are just staring at and caressing a blank screen.

Cliché Annoyance Factor: Low / Moderate / High

2 comments:

  1. This is one of the few-ish things Scream 4 has going for it - that movie is almost exclusively about people on cell phones, calling, texting, etc.

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  2. True.

    That said, despite Scream 4’s post-post-modern sensibilities it still employs that age old slasher cliché of having an antagonist (or antagonists, as the case may be) that is impossibly stealth like and elusive for the whole movie but for some reason suddenly becomes a very un-stealth like, un-elusive, bumbling klutz in the final scene.

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