Synopsis
Six friends hire a medium to hold a seance via Zoom during lockdown – but they get far more than they bargained for as things quickly go wrong. When an evil spirit starts invading their homes, they begin to realize they might not survive the night.
Review
Clearly, no one in this movie ever watched Lesley Manning’s Ghostwatch otherwise they’d have known that hosting an online séance over Zoom was a pretty bad idea. ‘Okay boomer’ some younger readers might mutter to themselves, but I’m still traumatized by my encounter with ‘Mr Pipes’ when the BBC broadcast a supposedly real-life ghost hunt on Halloween night back in 1992 (please remember I was nine).
Apparently, Host was inspired by a real-life conversation between the film’s director (Rob Savage) and a medium, who told him that business had been booming during the COVID pandemic. Inspired by this conversation he wrote the film (alongside Jed Shepherd and Gemma Hurley) and assembled his cast and crew remotely to film during the height of the pandemic.
Taking its cues from 2014’s Unfriended and 2015’s Cyberbully the film serves up a shared screen experience for viewers to ‘enjoy’ as we watch this group of friends undertake the rather foolish endeavour of hiring a medium to spice up their weekly catch-ups over Zoom (stick to the quizzes guys).
What starts as just a bit of fun for this mostly female group of friends, there’s a great joke early on involving the unexpected arrival of an Amazon delivery, eventually takes a turn for the worse when they find themselves tormented by an evil spirit they’ve inadvertently summoned.
Viewers of a nervous disposition may find their nerves shredded through this hour-long Shudder exclusive, as it’s filled with jump scares aplenty. Stand out sequences incorporate the use of face filters and custom wallpapers to fantastic effect and whilst I’m not normally a fan of jump scares I thought they were well-executed here.
The shared screen aspect of the feature also works in creating a genuine sense of tension throughout the feature as the camera jumps from one laptop/phone screen to another, or switches to Zoom’s gallery mode for reaction shots.
Like all found/shared footage films you’ll occasionally find yourself questioning why characters in the feature are doing what they’re doing, or why they’d carry on filming whenever things are getting so tense, but I guess you’ve just gotta with it.
Clocking in at just an hour in length, the film does start to run out of steam near the end, but just as everything starts to get a bit silly and over the top everything gets wrapped up before Host really starts to feel like an idea for a short movie that’s been stretched too far.
Fans of the aforementioned Unfriended and the Paranormal Activity series will find themselves right at home with this feature. Savage’s film clearly doesn’t have the budget of Levan Gabriadze’s Unfriended, but its lower budget works in its favour as I found this film to be a much more tense viewing experience.
The restrictions in Gabriadze’s feature were self-inflicted, a creative decision by the film’s director/producers designed to help give the film a unique selling point or ‘gimmick to maximise its appeal at the box-office. But for Savage, these restrictions have been enforced due to the pandemic and he must be applauded for delivering an effective horror movie for what feels like such a ‘hokey’ premise.
Verdict
The film’s director and writers saw an opportunity and they took it, delivering an effective low-budget horror that makes the most of the limitations enforced upon them during the COVID pandemic.
