Can You Hear Me Now?

I've read a lot of thrillers and horror scripts over the last few years, and many of them come to the inevitable point where the main character(s) could really use some outside help, but are unable to summon it.

The modern-day complication is that pretty much everyone has a cellphone, which has to be accounted for so that the possibility that it can actually be used can be eliminated.

Unfortunately, there seem to only be a few ways to tackle this, and most of them have become cliched, very familiar and fairly uninspired.

Too many people fall back on simply having themain characters BE OUT OF CELLPHONE RANGE, which can work if they are in the middle of the desert or out in the wilderness. But I've read a scary number of lazy scripts where characters find they have no cell phone reception, despite being in the middle of a suburban area. The last script the characters had this problem, they were locked in a high school.

An alternative is to DISPOSE OF THE CELL PHONE, either by having it destroyed or lost along the way. But easily the most cliched scene now is the workaholic guy whose wife/girlfriend/buddy throws his cellphone out the car window, so that they won't constantly be on it for what is supposed to be a restful holiday weekend. Never mind that most people have so much info on their phones now that this comes off as an immature, stupid act that would simply serve to piss the cellphone owner off.

Occasionally the problem is a DEAD BATTERY, though this is handled in melodramatic fashion, with the battery dying at just the wrong moment.

The other one that keeps cropping up is the LEFT BEHIND CELLPHONE, usually marked by an early scene in which someone tries to call the main character, only to have the requisite shot of the phone ringing where the characters were before, but no longer are now.

Sigh.

It's time to come up with some inspired ways to eliminate the cellphone logic hole. If you've got one in your script, see if you can eliminate it in some interesting, clever way.