Making Modern Communication Work in Horror Games

[Bill Zebub]

The cosmic horror is only one adversary. The other is the shadowy group that may or may not have infiltrated the government, and may or may not be waiting for you to turn your phone on so they can spy on you.

 

[zarionofarabel]

The cosmic horror is only one adversary. The other is the shadowy group that may or may not have infiltrated the government, and may or may not be waiting for you to turn your phone on so they can spy on you.

Or, you know, just the government itself, no shadowy group needed in most cases...

 

[Bill Zebub]

Or, you know, just the government itself, no shadowy group needed in most cases...

Oh I thought we were talking about make-believe. But if you’re into realism, sure…

 

[Retros_x]

I love when modern media and communication don't just get circumvented (battery empty, no service etc.) in horror stories but get actually well integrated. Modern technology has so much potential to induce fear and horror, I love when the genre does that. I just recently read "The Ring" and its first sequel for the first time and loved how it mixed a ghost story and psychic powers with mass media.

 

[JConstantine]

There's various ways to incorporate modern technology into horror, depending on what subgenre of horror you're aiming for.

With telephones, sure, you can have a mobile/cell phone run of battery or lose signal at an inopportune moment, or a storm knock out the power for landlines, but active use of the phone can facilitate horror. The phone ringing at wrong moment has already been mentioned. Having the villain call a potential victim to terrorise them first is another option, as demonstrated by the opening of every Scream movie, but the second. Needing to ditch a phone because it can be tracked is a staple of modern espionage fiction, but that principle can be employed here too. More subtle uses are also possible, like the phone ringing simply when it's not expected (eg. late at night), or shouldn't even be possible (eg. turned off, or line severed), such as in The Black Phone.

Audio-visual recording equipment is great for building tension and fear. From Ringu (The Ring) to Ghostbusters 2 to The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, cameras capturing something supernatural has long been established. Maybe the camera picks up something that isn't visible to the naked eye, or the opposite: something you see and even interact with doesn't get recorded. Was it a glitch or something supernatural? Are you just losing your mind, or is there a scientific explanation? Same can go for audio recordings.

Remember those stupid chain letters that said you had to send it to 10 other people or Something Bad™ would happen? Remember how that transitioned to email in the early days of commercial internet? Well, what if it wasn't naughty word?
Now imagine the premise of Ringu combined with YouTube and chain emails. That's basically a horror pandemic.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was mentioned in the OP and there were several episodes that utilised modern technology to propel the plot. For example, in the episode I Robot, You Jane, the demon Moloch had been trapped in a tome back in the 15th century, but in the modern day, Willow was trying to digitise Giles' collection (which just so happened to include this book) for more efficient indexing and in scanning this particular tome, Moloch was released into the internet. He was able to get people to build him a robotic body to transfer to (hence the episode's title), but that's rather less interesting than a demon having access to near enough every computer system - a nice twist on the rogue AI escaping into the internet.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The phone ringing at wrong moment has already been mentioned.

Expanding on this: smart phones can make all kinds of noise. Besides phone calls, there’s alerts for texts, emails, alarms, reminders, appointments and more. And not all of them can be silenced by simply muting the device.

Not only that, even if you successfully remember to turn off ALL the noises, if it’s set to vibrate instead, it can make a bunch of noise if it’s lying on the right surface.

As Riddick once said,

(I once went on an international trip and intentionally left my phone at home, but forgot to turn off all the various noises & notifications. )

 

[Deset Gled]

Expanding on this: smart phones can make all kinds of noise. Besides phone calls, there’s alerts for texts, emails, alarms, reminders, appointments and more. And not all of them can be silenced by simply muting the device.

They output all kinds of electromagnetic noise as well. There's certainly a risk that a monster, alien, or even a human with a Geordi-style visor could use that to track victims. A similar excuse was used for the mini-graboids to attack radios in Tremors 2.

Modern technology is great for horror. See Mike Flanagan’s movie Oculus for a laundry list of swipable moments. Phone calls and web searches that gradually reveal themselves to be all wrong are favorite effects of mine. Characters can experience right in the middle of a familiar city, and even more so if the geometry starts getting weird.

I'll toss out Smile and Smile 2 as movies that use phones and other tech in a similar way.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Another way to use technology in modern horror: you shop online to get weapons & supplies delivered to you via Amazon drones!* Of course, this gives your position away…**

But what if the baddie just wants his machete back?





*

** so you order a Lyft or Über