I would all like you to give another warm welcome to my guest here at CRR's! And also HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Maria is a writer interested in comic books, cycling, and horror films. Her hobbies include cooking, doodling, and finding local shops around the city. She currently lives in Chicago with her two pet turtles, Franklin and Roy. You can follow her on Twitter @MariaRamos1889.
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Take Scream, for example.
Released in the mid 90s, this slasher classic was the first of its
kind featuring characters who were aware of real world horror films.
The entire premise
of the film revolves around victims receiving mysterious threats
from an unknown caller who then appears in a ghost mask and kills
whoever was on the line. Of course, caller ID wasn't really a thing
back then and many teens get brutally murdered over the course of the
film.
Home Alone, another 90s classic,
would also be completely different today. Following a power outage
and all the alarms being turned off, the McCallister family scrambles
to get to the airport in time for their flight to Paris and the
parents don’t realize until it’s too late that they have left
their 8 year old son Kevin behind. Of course, there’s no way to
check up on him and all the direct flights back home are booked.
Needless to say, this
movie would’ve never happened today.
The Ring, the first
American remake of a Japanese horror classic, features viewers of
a videotape inexplicably dying seven days after watching it. The
plotline is a bit strange with the tape being haunted by an evil
entity known as Samara who literally crawls out of the television and
scares the person to death. A horrifying film at the time of its
release, the movie still holds up to this day and many regard it as a
classic. But VHS tapes are long gone, and now even DVD’s are on
their way out with all these new
streaming services constantly popping up. However, could she
perform such a feat on a DVD or Blu-ray disc? It’s possible, The
Ring could still work because Samara is technically a spirit, so
even our current technology might not be able to stop her.
Funny Games was a sick and
mentally disturbing game of a foreign film that was released in 1997,
with an American remake
in 2007. The film features a family of three that goes on a
vacation to the countryside where two evil young men take the family
hostage and force them to perform a number of sadistic “games”.
While malfunctioning phones are shown in the film, many people have
security systems in
their vacation homes these days and even if the victims had
knowingly allowed their visitors into the house, they still could
have used the system to alert authorities. It’s also safe to say
there would be more than one cell phone and surely some sort of
tablet or computer lying around. Funny Games would have had a
much different ending with our new device consumed lifestyles.
How Home Invasion Films Could Change
with Today’s Technology
Films that were made in the past were
great in their own time, but that’s all these films have come to be
- things of the past. Can you imagine how different these classics
from the 90s and beyond would be in today’s world? In the day and
age of WiFi and a plethora of advanced technology at our fingertips,
several of these overused movie tropes from the past would not make
any sense. Many can’t go a full twenty-four hours without their
cell phone, and the fact that villains would have to devise plans to
combat all such technology in order to fulfill their evil deeds,
leaves us with a number of plots that just wouldn’t fly in today’s
tech-savvy world.
Scream
Take Scream, for example.
Released in the mid 90s, this slasher classic was the first of its
kind featuring characters who were aware of real world horror films.
The entire premise
of the film revolves around victims receiving mysterious threats
from an unknown caller who then appears in a ghost mask and kills
whoever was on the line. Of course, caller ID wasn't really a thing
back then and many teens get brutally murdered over the course of the
film.
It’s clear this movie would need
significant rewrites in order for it to work in today's world. First
of all, the killer uses a phone to torment his victims before he
kills them. We now have caller ID built into just about every
telecommunications device, and thanks to advanced GPS
tracking capabilities, the killer's location would have been
discovered almost immediately. Unfortunately, we’ve advanced to the
point where there are now caller
ID spoofing apps, and technology to outsmart these apps; but
either way this technology would render the original Ghostface
villains tactics obsolete.
Home Alone
Home Alone, another 90s classic,
would also be completely different today. Following a power outage
and all the alarms being turned off, the McCallister family scrambles
to get to the airport in time for their flight to Paris and the
parents don’t realize until it’s too late that they have left
their 8 year old son Kevin behind. Of course, there’s no way to
check up on him and all the direct flights back home are booked.
Needless to say, this
movie would’ve never happened today.
The McCallister family is generally
well off and have a pretty nice house. It’s probably safe to assume
all of their kids would have an iPhone, and with today’s WiFi
capabilities it wouldn’t have been overly difficult to reach Kevin
on the phone, through text message, or some app. Still, the
McCallister's were loaded, and they wouldn’t have left their
mansion unprotected meaning it would have been armed with the best
home
security system that money can buy which would’ve allowed
Kevin’s parents to check up on him via
online video and alerted the authorities to any intrusions. The
two criminals who tormented young Kevin in more than one film would
have been arrested immediately.
The Ring
The Ring, the first
American remake of a Japanese horror classic, features viewers of
a videotape inexplicably dying seven days after watching it. The
plotline is a bit strange with the tape being haunted by an evil
entity known as Samara who literally crawls out of the television and
scares the person to death. A horrifying film at the time of its
release, the movie still holds up to this day and many regard it as a
classic. But VHS tapes are long gone, and now even DVD’s are on
their way out with all these new
streaming services constantly popping up. However, could she
perform such a feat on a DVD or Blu-ray disc? It’s possible, The
Ring could still work because Samara is technically a spirit, so
even our current technology might not be able to stop her.
Funny Games
Funny Games was a sick and
mentally disturbing game of a foreign film that was released in 1997,
with an American remake
in 2007. The film features a family of three that goes on a
vacation to the countryside where two evil young men take the family
hostage and force them to perform a number of sadistic “games”.
While malfunctioning phones are shown in the film, many people have
security systems in
their vacation homes these days and even if the victims had
knowingly allowed their visitors into the house, they still could
have used the system to alert authorities. It’s also safe to say
there would be more than one cell phone and surely some sort of
tablet or computer lying around. Funny Games would have had a
much different ending with our new device consumed lifestyles.
Conclusion
Movies are like a time capsule. The
technology that's available at the time of a film's production cannot
be changed. If you stop and think about it, today's movies wouldn't
work ten years from now either. That's why it's important for us to
appreciate the classic films for what they are. Writers today have to
think about technology when writing a film set in modern times. Home
invasion films are much harder to pull off in today's technologically
sound world, of course we just have to be ahead of the times as so
perfectly demonstrated in The
Purge. While the technology references may become outdated
and new systems more difficult to overrun, the home invasion trope
will continue to entertain as long as it’s a possibility lurking
right outside your door.
3 comments:
I will never watch Purge, it looks too scary
ah yes that's true, we always need to take that into account.
I really enjoyed this post, thank you! Indeed the technology is a clear marker in what era the movie was made. It might be even entertaining - e.g. watching a James Bond who runs frantically from one shop to the other looking for a payphone...
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