That would've been a good idea. Maybe they thought the audience wouldn't remember flip phones. It wouldn't have been hard to throw in a title card "2006" or whatever at the bottom.
Well, there's reasons for that, and what the book does with it is pretty disturbing. I doubt the movie will get into any of those interesting ideas or creepy moments because this is a Stephen King adaptation. I can tell just by the trailers "guns, guns, shoot 'em up" clips. There were reasons in the book that wasn't a good idea, and that's also going to be ignored because this movie probably only got out of development hell because of The Walking Dead, which means it needs to emulate that instead of its source material.
For anyone who hasn't read the book, isn't planning to see the movie, and doesn't care about spoilers:
The title has a double-meaning. Obviously the signal that drives people crazy is spread through cell phones, but the survivors figure that out pretty early on. By the first night, there are broken cell phones on the ground where people have gathered, so that's out of the story early on (mostly).
The important part is what's happened to the people affected by the signal. At first, their brains seem wiped of all higher function, so they act like rage zombies/infected. But by the next day they're forming herds, new patterns of behavior. Each human being is a cell of a larger mental organism, essentially a hivemind between them. One of the creepy moments for me was when the main characters come across a football stadium filled with the infected, all lying around, and they hear the sound of the people blinking in unison. That's what the title is mainly alluding to; people no longer being individuals, just cells of a larger function. They still attack the uninfected at first, but then things get fucked up as the infected hivemind begins to draw in the uninfected, so there's not just the obvious risk of death in a zombie-type situation, but the erasure of your mind, individuality, who you are, etc. to then serve a different will.
The important part is what's happened to the people affected by the signal. At first, their brains seem wiped of all higher function, so they act like rage zombies/infected. But by the next day they're forming herds, new patterns of behavior. Each human being is a cell of a larger mental organism, essentially a hivemind between them. One of the creepy moments for me was when the main characters come across a football stadium filled with the infected, all lying around, and they hear the sound of the people blinking in unison. That's what the title is mainly alluding to; people no longer being individuals, just cells of a larger function. They still attack the uninfected at first, but then things get fucked up as the infected hivemind begins to draw in the uninfected, so there's not just the obvious risk of death in a zombie-type situation, but the erasure of your mind, individuality, who you are, etc. to then serve a different will.
They'll do some of that in the movie at least, because they're following the books, but you can see why gunning them down isn't going to work. I don't want to shit on the movie over just the trailer; just little details are making me think this is largely going to be a generic rage zombie movie. Not sure if I'm going to see it, but maybe I'll re-read the book soon.
