TECHNES Encyclopedia Database

A favoured instrument in horror films and thrillers, the telephone is often used to threaten or harass (mostly women) by someone who cannot be identified. Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) remains an emblematic example of this. In 2016, Olivier Assayas, in his film Personal Shopper, updated this trope of the mysterious harasser by transforming the “masked” calls into salvos of telephone texts which appear to come from a space-time different from that of the main character.