With the Streaming Wars in full swing, the emphasis on original content has become more crucial than ever. From the outside looking in, there are several reasons to think that Host wouldn’t work. While the movie certainly has its limitations, it’s a wonderfully innovative and completely effective horror movie for the Zoom era.
When a group of friends virtually gets together for an online seance, they accidentally invite a demonic presence into their lives and are forced to watch events unfold through their internet-connected devices.
Director Rob Savage is deserving of all the praise and attention this project has received. Even if you’re suffering from Zoom fatigue, we’re all intimately familiar with the platform, or some other digital meeting software. That familiarity goes a long way in cultivating a rapport with the audience. Predecessors have tried similar tech-heavy approaches with mixed success but always seemed to get bogged down in the minutia of computer operations. Savage expertly guided this story that he co-wrote with Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd, and the screenplay reflects a deep understanding of their constraints. This stripped-down, straight-forward presentation keeps the focus where it should be: with the actors.
There are a few targeted, passionate performances that land with terrific effectiveness and fuel the emotional core of the story. In particular, Caroline Ward, Jemma Moore, and Emma Lousie Webb embody the kind of raw fear you need to make things believable. The rest of the performances aren’t bad but used more to dictate reactions than to sell what’s happening. Even with all the technical successes of the production, no one would be talking about it if it wasn’t legitimately scary and the acting drives the point home.
The lack of camera quality is a blessing here because it helps disguise things and lets your imagination fill in the blanks, which is a critical element of effective horror. Practical visual effects are another aspect of generating scares, and the whole VFX team did a fantastic job, not just in execution but in design as well. Piecing it all together, film editor Brenna Rangott also played a massive role in shaping the final product.
At only 57 minutes, it comes in just a bit longer than a long short film but well short of an average feature, but I’m glad they didn’t try to stretch it any longer than it needed to be. I hesitate to use the word revolutionary, but Host may very well stand as a seminal moment in horror like The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity.
Recommendation: If you love horror movies, this is a must-see for its creativity alone.