Movie Plots that Technology Killed

The Ring

Both in the Japanese original and in the very fine American remake, everyone who looks at a creepy videotape dies within seven days because a scary little girl comes slithering out of the television and scares them to death. VHS is now obsolete, so this would never happen today. DVDs are on their way out, too. Maybe if people downloaded the film illegally from some server in Holland, the creepy little girl would only kill the guy running the file-sharing system first, making law enforcement officials everywhere happy. But even in this scenario there might be problems because a lot of people watch illegally downloaded videos on their cell phones and even the creepiest little girl would have trouble slithering out of a screen that small. As soon as she made her appearance, menaced parties could just remove the sim card or chuck the phone into the river. They're not expensive. Realistically, if The Ring were made today, the creepy little girl would probably upload her film onto Netflix and a million people would get an unexpected visit from her. Meanwhile, thousands of film buffs would blog that Ringu was a much better horror film, because Japanese streaming services are scarier than Netflix. Everyone knows that.

The Spiral Staircase

In this classic 1945 thriller, a mute housekeeper (Dorothy McGuire) is unable to call the police and tell them that she is trapped inside a spooky, isolated mansion where she is being terrorised by a murderer who knows she cannot speak and is not that handy with her fists. Email, smart phones, texting, tweeting, what have you render the entire plotline obsolete. Luckily, nobody makes these kinds of movies anymore anyway. They're offensive to mutes.

One Missed Call

In Takashi Miike's excellent 2003 film – the 2008 American remake is not quite up to snuff – innocent Japanese kids get phone messages from beyond the grave warning them that they are next in line to die a horrible death. Phone messages make great cinema, due to the evocative power of the human voice. But One Missed Text? One Missed Tweet? Just not the same. Another thing: In more than one Asian horror flick, photographers developing film in their dark rooms get murdered by people who unexpectedly come to life during the developing process. Those days are gone. Thanks, digital camera.