A corpse lies on a table. A scientist applies electricity to the lifeless body. Suddenly, dead muscles contract and eyelids flicker.
This isn’t a horror story. It’s a very real demonstration held in an operating theater for the public to bear witness in the early 1800s, capturing the imagination of the general public and medical practitioners alike. This act of galvanism helped spark inspiration for a little story titled The Modern Prometheus, otherwise known as Frankenstein.
When something permeates the public consciousness, art and pop culture reflect it. Creature features and kaiju movies reflected nuclear anxiety, Godzilla being the most popular symbol of that unease. Alien invasion movies reflected the Red Scare, most notably with Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Extreme films and eventually slashers followed the Vietnam War when footage of overseas atrocities became accessible to the public. Exploitative violence and aggression were in vogue, as seen in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Last House on the Left.
From the 18th century onward, the exponential advancement of technology has captured people’s interest and given birth to a new fear. Shadows, animals, and nature weren’t the only inspiration for nightmares anymore. Electricity, machines, and all sorts of human invention now posed as much of a threat as it did a promising future.
One of the most commonly used pieces of technology is the phone. If you don’t have one, you know someone who does. And before we figured out how to fit them into a pocket or purse, almost every single house in America had one. Nowadays, it’s used for almost every other reason than to make a call. But even decades ago, making a call was still a grand concept. No more waiting on the letters of a loved one, instead you could hear someone’s voice regardless of distance. Communication was immediate and intimate, the outside world now able to whisper into your ear. Do you see how this whimsical invention can seem a little…unsettling?
Take the movie, When a Stranger Calls. A young woman is alone babysitting when she receives a phone call from, you guessed it, a stranger. Each call becomes more and more threatening, emphasizing the anxiety of easier and more accessible communication. Creeps don’t need to be in your physical proximity to get under your skin anymore. Aggressors no longer need to scream outside your door or window to threaten you. As seen literally in the film, they just need your number to scare you from inside your own home. Spoiler: the titular stranger isn’t as far away as you might think.
This idea of giving a new tool for predatory figures to suddenly have a direct line of connection to their victims is a very real occurrence. Innocently, prank calls were a trend. But police reports made about lewd or even threatening phone calls aren’t purely fictional. We see the scary real-life application of this technology echoed throughout film as an effective means of horror, time and time again.
Black Christmas is all about a killer harassing a sorority house with phone calls. Michael Myers intimidates via telephone in the film Halloween. And every single Scream movie features the killer inducing panic in their potential victim with a phone call. Eventually, Ghostface even takes up texting, not to mention an app that controls smart locks.
A basic piece of technology can be turned against you if it’s in the wrong hands. This anxiety of a direct line of communication is indicative of a broader fear: the weaponization of tech.
2020’s The Invisible Man is a remake of the classic Universal monster movie with a contemporary twist. A woman narrowly escapes her abusive boyfriend, the owner of a tech company who holds immense wealth and power. When she finds out that he’s apparently committed suicide, she feels only slightly relieved, still feeling like she’s within his reach of him. Great movie, highly recommended, but I have to spoil it here. Using a suit that acts as an optical illusion making him invisible, he harasses, abuses, and manages to institutionalize her.
Of course this is a fantastical concept. But billionaires with power and reach are real.
What happens if one of them goes on a temper tantrum? What if they seek to expand their power and reach towards the general public? Could they purchase an entire social media platform and reframe it around their own ego? That would be crazy, right?
On a smaller level, an abuser could use technology to get closer to the abused, even after separation. A phone call would do the trick. A text. Or they could be completely transparent in their pursuit, stalking social media or using search engines to gain information, even locations.
Possessor is about taking over a person’s body to use it as a weapon. It’s a beautifully disturbing film that utilizes a type of technology that doesn’t exist. Yet someone can possess your banking information and ruin your life. Someone can possess your identity and image online and ruin your reputation.
Creep harnesses a more grounded narrative. A documentarian answers an ad online to meet up and record someone. He finds out the person he’s recording lied about their identity and might not be safe to be around. Catfishing happens for sure. But that’s nothing in comparison to the fact that people actually come to find themselves in unsafe situations with people they met online. Dating apps have led to assault, robbery, and worse.
At a social level, cyberbullying doesn’t even require a meetup for dire consequences. Depression, anxiety, the degradation of self esteem, and the warping of self image can all be induced through a monitor from one person to another. All this negative energy seeping through a screen calls to mind The Ring.
And this is all surface level accessibility. There’s a whole section of the internet used for illegal activities where people can buy information, drugs, and even other people. Snuff films and human trafficking are a non-fictional occurrence and the focus of the sequel to the movie Unfriended.
The internet at its most simplified is that very idea of connection that branches from accessible communication. The phone only allowed one form of communication, whereas the internet allowed for a dozen more with a dozen variations and millions of people with access to it all at once.
Let’s just assume that everyone is a decent, good human being who would never weaponize a scientific advancement. Technology in and of itself can be a danger.
Basic machines can and have caused grievous injuries and deaths for hundreds of years. In an effort to forward safety, convenience, and just profitable novelty, software enhancements have been made. Regardless of state-of-the-art engineering, high tech machines still are just as monstrous.
A self-driving car is a cool idea. But now an entire new field of danger reveals itself when a technological malfunction happens. It makes sense that after hearing so much about groundbreaking tech causing a more noticeable amount of harm than helpfulness, a movie like M3GAN would manifest itself.
Yet even well before the 2020s, storytellers were more than aware of the idea that technology may reach a point where a malfunction could mean more than a car accident. 2001: A Space Odyssey utilizes the idea of an A.I. with less than noble intent. That movie came out in 1968, exemplifying that this idea is nothing new.
1984’s Terminator uses a similar concept, except that the A.I. is now a cybernetic assassin with a gun. A.I. strikes again in I, Robot in 2004 and evolves into Ex Machina in 2014. The latter movie is about a humanoid robot with artificial intelligence proving that she has a consciousness just as much as a human being does.
Artificial intelligence is just that. Intelligent. We just have to hope that intellect is used for the betterment of humanity.
But let’s say, hypothetically, all people are good. All technology works perfectly. What else would we have to fear in regard to these technological advancements? I’m so glad you asked.
With new tools to further our exploration of life and the universe, we move ever closer to actually answering certain cosmic questions. Are we prepared for those answers?
Before we move to space, what if we finally have the scientific and engineering means to completely explore our oceans?
Watch Underwater where in the year 2050, people discover what’s really hiding in the ocean’s depths. Or, if you’re eager to forward humanity’s understanding of the stars, watch Alien. Alternatively, watch its prequel Prometheus.
While all of this is about the subgenre of techno horror, there is some crossover with it and cosmic horror. Popularized by H.P. Lovecraft, this subgenre finds the fear in the unknowable or the incomprehensible, finding an answer that makes the very pursuit of it insignificant in its revelation. Our insignificance as a whole. Things that dwell in the void of the seas, of space, and of time.
The use of inventions to find these answers can be seen most notably in Lovecraft’s story From Beyond, also adapted into a film. A scientist uses a device to see an entire spectrum of energy that exists within the fabric of our reality. Unfortunately, things that dwell within that spectrum see him too, and the veil between our existence and theirs grows thinner.
A good person using technology properly for the betterment of life can still stumble across a truth too unsettling to even consider.
Let’s refocus this quest for advancement back to the human populace. In the near future, technology provides a great promise of rehabilitation and sustained health.
As we see in Upgrade, a disabled man regains the ability to walk thanks to a new piece of tech implanted in him. It doesn’t bring back the partner he lost in the incident that paralyzed him to begin with. However, he finds out it may help him get revenge on those who caused it. This film hammers home the idea that medical tech might be both a great blessing as well as a great risk.
Hardware and software entwined with our bones and muscles isn’t difficult to see as scary. But the potential for health? Many take that chance currently. Eventually, people might reach a point where they desire augmentation for more superficial reasons.
Tech is a part of our lives, our culture, the way we function and evolve. We worship it. Tetsuo: The Iron Man shows a man who fetishizes metal and forces it into his own body, inadvertently melding with it. Titane is about a woman who has a lust for cars. She gets a huge surprise when she finds out she’s pregnant. The video game Cyberpunk takes place in a future where people modify themselves with tech for aesthetic reasons and physical enhancements–also an aspect of the film Total Recall. Commercialized and privately owned law enforcement take center stage when a murdered police officer gets a physical tune up in Robocop.
This bleeds over to another subgenre called body horror, often in the same conversation as director David Cronenberg. His film Videodrome is about society’s desensitization towards violence and obscenity. This conversation culminates into this idea of the next step in human evolution being this integration with technology.
Humans grow ever closer to cybernetic convergence. From working on laptops and socializing via smartphones, having fun within a virtual reality and learning through smart glasses, tech is pervading every aspect of our lives. We depend on it.
Amongst all of this anxiety about the dangers that can bloom from these gadgets and gizmos, it’s easy to forget the alternative. What if, one day, everything shut off? Every means of communication, every home appliance, every lightbulb, every modern piece of medical equipment. An internet virus from a foreign attack or a solar flare. It could happen.
The exponential advancement of technology has ingrained itself in humanity’s very existence. There’s no going back and there’s little room for course correction. Humans continue to mishandle inventions. A.I. continues to learn. We hurdle towards truths we’re not prepared for. Tech constricts around our day-to-day lives increasingly tighter.
With these truths comes the observation that our fears evolve too, reflecting this progression. Techno horror is a black mirror reflecting the state of things. Nihilistic or realistic, this much seems to be true – we used to find fear in the shadows. Now we see it in the blue light of a screen.
Velocity 
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