I’m noticing more and more films and TV shows set in the 90s, or very late 80s. Part of this might be nostalgia on the part of Gen X writers, but I think there’s an obvious practical reason. This is the last window in which people didn’t have GPS, and characters could plausibly not have cellphones or email (though both existed). Plot devices can run, as they did for decades, on the assumption that someone out of town was out of touch - and that someone lost can’t just pull a device from their pocket and call for help.
Time on screen
Timothy Wilcox talks about this a lot--it's a funny thing