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So I was moseying along past the TV when a classic horror-style flick caught my eye. As one might readily imagine the plot involved 2 young kids (late teens) encountering the first corpse of the evening.

Cut to scene of older black lady saying "Every 23rd year for 23 days it gets to EAT... don't MAKE me explain that to you...."

Naturally perturbed, the youngsters take themselves off to the first house they see with lights and clamor at the screen door to use the phone.

Cut to scene of dimly lit house, crawling with cats quaintly referred to as "babies" by senile old woman living there. "My babies don't LIKE strangers..."

Now if you go back 15 years and back even farther, this effort to 'phone for help' was an established procedure. Of course back then people were used to being incommunicado when physically out of reach of a land line. The quest to find a phone was always a key element, and one that became an essential part of all horror genre. (Remember the one where the babysitter finds out that the creepy calls were coming from INSIDE the house? Oooooooo.)

So, my question is, since the advent of the cell phone - what do horror movies do now? I mean sure, you see the dead body on the road, flip open your motorola razor, hit emergency, report the weirdness and never skip a beat. Do the creepies that call at night to suck you in through the phone line get thwarted by the fact that your phone doesn't ring when it's charging? And what about caller ID? Call waiting? Or text messaging? On the whole these advances in telecommunications seem like a bit of a downer for the diabolic elements. I mean having to TYPE in the message, sans lisp or heavy breathing just rather lacks the je-ne-sais-quois (in terms of evil portents).

True I'm not a great aficionado of the horror movie. But without the cell battery dyeing, the car charger failing and the lack of a backup battery... I just can't imagine the plot cliches as ever being the same.