Technology may have changed, but the phone's history in horror has remained all but the same. This revolutionary device still sends chills down spines and gives listeners a serious case of goosebumps, given the right circumstances.
Horror movies like Scream are crucial in how the phone is perceived in horror. However, these 10 other horror movies are entirely underrated, and are just waiting to reach out and touch someone.
Don't Hang Up (2016)
A pair of teenage pranksters get their cruel comeuppance in this British-made movie. Also borrowing elements from torture horrors like Saw, Don't Hang Up is an entirely entertaining slasher with a single location.
After one of the aforesaid jokers' pranks goes terribly wrong, the affected party comes after the adolescent boys for revenge. This entails trapping them in their house and playing deadly games on them.
Phone (2002)
A journalist is forced to get a new cellphone number after she reports on a pedophile scandal. In doing so, though, the mother and wife falls victim to a new kind of threat. The culprit is not an overzealous reader or a defender of the accused either. Instead, a ghost now haunts the woman—and she will do whatever it takes to get her to answer.
The Ring, but there is enough here to make it stand on its own merits.
The Call (2013)
Critics were not fans of Halle Berry's thriller The Call back when it came out, but there's no denying this implausible movie is, at the very least, exciting to watch. In the movie, Berry plays an emergency response operator who receives a call from a girl who has been abducted and stuffed in the back of a car trunk. The operator has to stay with her until she can track her location.
The Call is notable for its incredibly dark ending, which was a bold move on the story's part.
When A Stranger Calls Back (1993)
In this made-for-television sequel to the 1979 cult thriller When A Stranger Calls Back, another young woman is terrorized one night while babysitting. Julia is all alone in a strange home when a man asks for help outside the door; she eventually realizes he's not who he says he is. Later in college, Julia suspects the man has come back to finish what he started.
Often thought of as not as good as its predecessor, the sequel arguably does many things better. Including putting the victims first rather than overly focusing on the killer, like in the original movie.
Hotline (1982)
Lynda Carter of another TV-made curio, has Carter's spooked character enduring the frightening phone calls of an unknown man. Is it someone she knows? And just how close is he?
The Phone Call (1989)
This unique telefilm follows an average, middle-aged man who mistakenly calls the wrong pay-per-minute line one night. He really meant to call up a random woman. Or so he says. Instead, he reaches a service that caters to gay men.
After he insults the man on the other end of the line, the protagonist is stalked by the unhinged operator. He does everything in his power to blow up his life. How far will he go, though?
The movie is notable for its highly charged homosexual undercurrent that is hardly subtle.
I Saw What You Did (1988)
In this 1988 movie-of-the-week, two naughty teens play a game with a sibling. The game involves them calling a random number from the phone book and playing a harmless joke on them. When the three call up a man who so happens to be in the middle of cleaning up a murder he just committed, the girls become targets. The killer will do anything to silence the callers who unknowingly told him over the phone: "I saw what you did, and I know who you are."
The movie is a remake of the 1965 film of the same name, and both based on Urusula Curtiss' novel Out of the Dark.
Midnight Lace (1960)
An American woman and newlywed moves to London to be with her husband. As he works, she receives threatening phone calls. No one around her believes her, of course. In due time, though, this turns out to be more than just a lesson in gaslighting.
Midnight Lace is another Old Hollywood suspense tale with influences from Alfred Hitchcock.
Out of the Dark (1989)
Despite its sleazy leanings, Out of the Dark has some creepy setpieces. The 1989 erotic thriller has several women working at a Los Angeles-based sex hotline called Suite Nothings. It's an honest living for the employees until they come up against one caller who wants anything but sensual conversation. Rather, a clown masked-serial killer named Bobo is after the operators. More than phone lines will be going dead in this late '80s horror.
The Caller (2011)
The Caller sounds unoriginal on paper, at first. Upon further viewing, this slow burn turns out to be more than a simple thriller. It transforms into a heady, temporally defiant game of cat and mouse.
A divorced woman fresh out of a brutal marriage is living on her own again. When she starts to receive calls from a weird woman, the divorcee suspects there's more to the story than the other party is letting on.
