These days, there’s a stereotype out there that young people are too scared to answer the phone. While it’s obviously an overgeneralization, there’s a truth to it. Communication trends have shifted away from phone calls, turning instead toward texting, e-mail, and other written forms of communication.

Younger people who have never really had to talk on the phone much won’t do so of their own volition, so when they get a call it’s an unfamiliar way of communicating. You’d be hard-pressed to find a landline in a house with younger residents, and even my parents who grew up in the age of landlines barely use theirs anymore. Is it just easier to communicate in written form? Perhaps. Or maybe the average consumer has seen one too many horror movies where the calls are used for maximum scares.

Tracing the calls back to the 1950s, the story of the scary phone call may have started due to a real life murder in 1950, and became an urban legend shortly after.

It wasn’t until 1968 that the phone number 911 was adopted for emergency calls, so anyone in a dangerous situation would first have to be connected to the operator. In the movies however, the genre of phone horror likely started in the Mario Bava anthology film Black Sabbath. The first segment entitled “The Telephone” tells the story of a French call-girl who starts receiving strange and concerning phone calls from her former pimp. In true horror fashion, these calls are secretly not what they seem. This plot laid the groundwork for the phone horror sub-genre, but, during the 1970s, what defined the particular horror call tropes that have remained iconic were the “unknown callers”.

Both When A Stranger Calls and Black Christmas feature a mystery caller terrorizing a group of young people through the phone lines. What’s scary about these movies is the infinite possibility of the callers’ identities. These calls could be coming from anyone: a best friend or a perfect stranger, and the only indicator of the identity is a muffled phone line voice. When A Stranger Calls famously ends with the revelation that “the call is coming from inside the house”, a reveal that has been parodied many times, but still remains a terrifying concept. We as humans have always been scared of the unknown, and the idea of a mystery caller wormed its way into our imaginations.

The most famous of the unknown callers has got to be Ghostface himself, the masked menace of the Scream franchise. The interesting part about Ghostface is that there’s a new killer behind the mask in each movie, and the telephone voice is put through a very effective (although fairly unrealistic) voice modulator to disguise the identity of the caller. The calls all start off innocuous enough: asking the future victims what their favorite scary movie is, until they descend into threats and eventually Ghostface’s arrival (which is almost always coming from inside the house). Seriously, if you haven’t seen any of the Scream movies I highly recommend watching the first one, even if you’re not a fan of horror. Part of what makes these calls so effective is the deep baritone of Roger L Jackson, who always voices the modulated killer. To build tension, his demeanor will subtly shift in tone, from intriguing prank caller to unnerving harasser, to murderous psychopath. It was a smart choice for the film because if the killer was speaking in their normal voice it would both give away their identity, and likely wouldn’t be able to capture the specific tonal shifts and nuances that make the call so unnerving.

Another film that uses voice modulation to a chilling effect is the seminal 1984 movie The Terminator. While not thought of as a horror movie in the traditional sense, it was initially conceived by James Cameron as a “slasher style” film and features many tense and hair-raising sequences. The scene in question is when the main character, Sarah Connor, is on the phone with her worried mom after being chased by The Terminator. Sarah tries to reassure her mom by giving her the information on where she is staying, but the camera flips to the other side of the call and slowly reveals that the Terminator has killed her mom and is mimicking her mom’s voice to get the information. Watching that as an 11-year-old gave me the unforgettable creeps. What’s cool is that it’s using the voice modulation not to unnerve the character (as in Scream) but to unnerve the audience, serving us a bit of frightening dramatic irony. These contrasting moments of phone horror helped to evolve the genre beyond the standard scary caller, and into even more creative uses, like the supernatural chills of J-Horror flicks, Ringu (remade by Hollywood as The Ring) and One Missed Call, which both feature a mystery caller informing the listener that they’re about to die, and nothing else. Spooky!

All these creative ways to use phones in scary movies eventually lead to one of the most interesting uses of all, in the new film The Black Phone, which came out this past June. All the movies I’ve mentioned so far have used phones as a kind of death-line, but generally, they’re more frequently used as a lifeline. Victims being chased by killers in movies often try to get to the phone to retrieve help (before usually being stopped), and The Black Phone takes that to a heightened degree. The titular phone is a window to the supernatural - letting a kidnapped child named Finney speak to the ghostly former victims of his kidnapper. The phone is unplugged but rings periodically, attributed to leftover static electricity, shocking both Finney and the audience. When he finally answers it, he’s treated to a wall of sonic scuzz, clicking, and static, which builds dread and draws out the moment until one of the ghosts finally speaks from the other side. Throughout the whole film, the phone keeps us on our toes, sometimes unveiling voices instantly and sometimes ringing incessantly without an answer. This choice of sonic motif succeeds at being extremely creepy and setting up even bigger scares. The phone is his only connection to the world outside the locked basement he’s trapped in, even if the world outside is the world of the dead.

The ringing reminded me of a moment in Zola, which was not a horror movie, but had some tense and terrifying elements. In a crucial moment, the main character is trying to call for help, but the phone keeps ringing and ringing, with the volume increasing in the mix until all we can hear is the ring that surely will not be answered. But luckily for Finney, the dead children are there for him, making him aware of their previous escape attempts and revealing crucial details about the room. The phone becomes both a lifeline and a “deathline”, giving Finney hope even though his fellow conversationalists have passed on.

The genre of phone horror is no longer prominent, largely due to the widespread cell phone use/constant communication. A common complaint about modern horror is that it ignores the existence of cellphones, which seems to equate to a logical fallacy. However, many filmmakers have learned to adapt to a world with cell phones. Ghostface wouldn’t be able to pull off the same creepy calls in our world of Caller ID, but the new Scream movie puts a twist on the calls that leaves the audience guessing. Films like Zola even use the existence of cellphones to frighten. In our world of constant connection, what’s scarier than not being able to reach anyone? Hope is not lost for scary callers, and filmmakers will continue to innovate off this particular concept, as they’ve always done.