A Brief Taxonomy of Phone Calls in Horror Movies

Characters in horror movies often find themselves in situations involving the urgent need to make or receive phone calls—a simple enough task that’s inevitably complicated by the monster that’s after them. This trope especially thrives in media set during the age of land lines, but it’s followed the genre into the smart-phone era, too. Let’s examine the different types of phone-call horrors in movies. The Scary Call (Non-Supernatural) You’re home alone. The phone rings and there’s a stranger on the other end. It could be a wrong number. It could be someone asking if you’ve checked on the children lately. Or it could be a guy who wants to know what your favorite scary movie is… and what your insides look like. The scary (but all-too-human) call goes back to the very earliest slasher films, with both When a Stranger Calls (1979) and Black Christmas (1974) exploiting the urban legend of the killer who’s dialing from inside the house. Black Christmas’ eerie perversion of the obscene pho ... Read full article.