Wardrobes and sets that look like 1980s magazines and catalogues but not like 1980s real life, palette with deep blacks and super saturated accents, post processing as if shot on film with optical lens effects and distributed on magnetic video tape though obviously shot and edited one hundred percent digital, modern synthwave heavy soundtrack, titles in red text on black background… You know the entire package. It’s starting to feel lazy. For some reason it seems to be the aspiring young directors first feature length flick for the last few years or so. Damn I’d be more impressed by retro theming be the 90s or 00s that should be these directors genuine era of nostalgia.
That’s not really a hard question to answer. Cellphones batteries die. You can lose your phone or have it taken from you. It can be damaged. You could be physically isolated and have no signal. It could not work due to interference. You could be overheard. Hell even 911 call systems go down from time to time. Maybe the police are even in on it.
In pre-cellphone horror movies you still had to answer the question of “How come they don’t just start screaming for help or for someone to call the police” and if you can answer that question, the answer for the cellphone question isn’t much of a stretch beyond that.