Host (2020)

Director: Rob Savage

Writers: Rob Savage, Gemma Hurley, Jed Shepherd

Cast: Haley Bishop, Jemma Moore, Emma Louise Webb, Radina Drandova, Caroline Ward

Most people can’t stand gimmicks. They make us feel cheaply condescended to when we’re much smarter than the likes of those who think that tricks akin to a sheet on a string are going to make us lose sleep at night. We want more. We want to be scared, shaken, and spooked by something that comes off as genuine in attempt as is does in execution, even if the budget isn’t large. Horror can be known as being a genre that can overuse gimmicks depending upon circumstances like budget or lack of resources, but director Rob Savage proves those circumstances to be mere excuses with his low budget film, Host.

Host takes place over a 56-minute Zoom meeting. Haley (Haley Bishop) organizes five of her friends to perform a séance over the video conferencing platform and the women accidentally invite an unwanted member to the call. This paranormal thriller is a tightly written and fast paced experience that feels almost like taking a walk through a haunted house at Halloween Horror Nights without ever leaving your seat. Savage’s resourcefulness is as brilliant as it is conscious, giving the audience that haunted house feel with quick cuts between the wide screen that features all of the characters and full screens of each individual as the demon they’ve conjured wreaks havoc on them. The scares are subtle at first, forcing you to consistently search the backgrounds of each character’s screen, trying to spot where the next scare is going to come from. The pleasant kicker is, every time you think you’ve spotted it, you’re wrong. So, when it comes to suspense and scare tactics, you’re better off just calling off the search and going along with the ride.

The short run time, at 56 minutes, meant there was a narrow window to fit everything into. This is where Savage and fellow writers Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd really showed off some skill. It’s essentially a demon possession story, which was a solid choice because they’re pretty easy to keep simple: Person lets in demon, demon enters, people try their best to either get rid of it or get away from it, usually to no avail. It’s a pretty basic formula and not difficult to fit into a small box. It’s a smart call that allows the audience to focus on the scares without having to worry about the story. Story isn’t the point of this movie, and sometimes that’s okay, such as this case. This movie is purely meant to scare you, and it succeeds. In under an hour it manages to set up and knock down every Chekhov’s Gun scenario it presented with intelligent flow. Not once did the pace suffer from bringing in an element that we saw in the first few minutes. If there’s any solid example of Chekhov’s Gun in modern cinema, I would easily suggest this movie.

What’s any horror movie without some degree of dread and discomfort? Host is no exemption to this, using its resources to implement a sense of discomfort from the get-go that sticks with you all the way to the clever end credits. In one scene, a character has her computer and cell phone on at the same time, causing an unnerving feedback effect that is in no way a scare, but when paired with rapid visuals of connection issues, you’re left feeling disoriented and prepped for what’s to come. That, with all the special effects, while seemingly simple, played so well into the film’s aesthetic with great timing and fantastic execution.

Even with all the well thought out techniques used to bring us into the deadly Zoom meeting, Host would have been nothing without the incredible performances by the cast. The entire movie is presented with each actor essentially performing in a box, most of the time in a closeup, so it’s easy to imagine how challenging it was to come off natural and believable when their faces are what we mostly see. They all nailed it. Each player complimented each other and no one was left carrying the movie on their own, which is what we want to see from an ensemble. Even better, each actor kept true to their character’s personality consistently, not letting themselves drown in the sea of characters this movie had. It was well-balanced and it was easy to be equally invested in all of them. It felt like these were all real people going through real events.

In a genre where people let themselves fall into using gimmicks, Host really stands out as a movie that proves that not every low budget horror flick is merely some guy in an ill-fitting mask waiting around a corner to pop out and scare you. An intelligently constructed film, it grabs us by the shoulders and hurls us into a terrifying hour from which we can’t look away. The best way to watch this is on a computer, so flip open the laptop, turn off the lights, and join the meeting.

Host is available to stream on Shudder.