Host

Zoom With A View

Host
UK 2020 Directed by Rob Savage
ShudderHouse

Warning: This review hosts spoilers.

You know I may be getting a little jaded because this film is far from original in it’s ideas and intentions but then again, there’s not much new left in the world and I have to admire the writers Gemma Hurley, Rob Savage and Jed Shepherd... and the director (again, Savage) for conceiving, shooting and releasing a film in a totally socially distanced manner during the first six months of the Coronavirus lockdown. Also for taking an old fashioned dash of horror film movie making which, obviously, we’ve all seen before... and telling it through new technology which has become one of the communication tools of the lockdown, the Zoom meeting. And, yeah, it’s a movie about some people ‘holding a seance’ over Zoom. An obvious idea but, if done right, it can still be quite effective. Spoiler... it’s done quite well.

And, yes, we’ve seen a few movies set on computer laptops now, for sure. I think the best one I’ve seen before this was actually not a horror film but a murder mystery movie called Searching (reviewed here) and the strength of that particular film was, the twist ending would have been so obvious if it were not for the fact that telling it through the technology like they did meant they could distract you to the point where the 'reveal' genuinely takes you by surprise. Now, Host (one of a gazillion movies already called Host, The Host, Hosts or The Hosts... why they do this I’ll never know), doesn’t have that kind of surprise element involved in it but, that’s okay, it’s a horror movie and they’re not especially going for surprises here anyway, I think.

What we do have... and I think this will annoy some viewers (especially those as old as me), is a bunch of old clichés reshot through the lens of a new format... and that’s perfectly fine for a horror film. That kind of story really depends, not on the originality of the piece but whether the timing of the jump scares, in this case, are well enough done. Now, I know it’s a well put together movie because, for once, even though I was pretty sure I knew what was going to happen in the final moments... and I was right... the final shot still made me jump out of my skin. Which is a very welcome result as far as I’m concerned.

Okay, so lets look at some of the moments that detractors might think of as weaknesses...

 Well, the whole film is set and shot in a zoom meeting utilising special effects, presumably added with craftily downgraded CGI afterwards. Now I’m not familiar with Zoom myself but I’ve heard that when you talk in it, your screen blows up for everyone to fill the whole frame? Well that, of course, gives the film makers an ideal opportunity of one of the mainstays of a certain type of modern horror movie, preventing you seeing what’s going on in the other places the call is taking place while one person is dominating the screen. It even means that, while I’m sure the film must be edited to death and different takes mixed together on the main zoom screen, you can easily cover your tracks by cutting away from things when you don’t like the end of a person’s performance.

Those performances here, by the way, of the seven main actresses and the lone male... Haley Bishop, Jemma Moore, Emma Louise Webb, Radina Drandova. Caroline Ward, Alan Emrys, Jinny Lofthouse and the amazing Seylan Baxter... are all absolutely brilliant. They’re the kind of performances you tend to get when the director is relying on no musical scoring and a POV style of shooting but, clearly, you need good actors for that kind of thing and that’s exactly what he gets here. I loved the fact, also, that the actors were all using their own first names for their characters.

Anyway, back to the clichés... well there are some obvious things the writers just want you to notice right from the start, which they deliberately call attention to. You have the character who obviously lives very near to one of the others, who talks to the other through a window, establishing that, at some point in the film, one of those two characters is obviously going to go to the other person’s apartment to see just what is going on. There’s also another character who has a Zoom background movie of herself walking to the fridge to get a drink and... you just know that’s going to be used later as a blocking device to stop you seeing what’s really going on and then jump scaring you. Yep... check. You have the one character who leaves the call way early so you immediately assume that, when they come back later, they’re there as both an unbelieving witness to the devastation wrought by the evil spirit... who quite clearly and literally acts just the way the spiritualist who has opened up the channel to the spirit world said it might act if disrespected... and also to be quickly convinced otherwise when the demonic entity in question pays a quick visit on that channel too.

And it’s things like this and the fact that almost every character has a door open in the background so you can see into another part of their apartment, adding a lot of depth to the rooms they are Zooming from... so things can happen at the periphery of the call if you happen to be watching the right part of the screen, that might all seem a bit obvious to the average horror afficionado. And, alright, they are but... still, I have to admire what the director, working under the restrictions of shooting remotely on an actual zoom call, was going for. Especially when, you know, some of those tired old clichés of jump scares really work.

And that’s the case here. If you think the writers and director are just raiding old ghost story and possession ideas then, okay fine, they are. But that’s what pretty much all horror writers and directors do. Some do it really well, though and get away with it. I’ve also seen a number of them over the last ten years which, for one reason or another, nowhere nearly nailed it as well as this lot did so... yeah... I don’t really care. When it works it works. So... original, no. Scary... not really but those jump moments really do get you and I’m assuming that this means I was feeling a certain amount of tension already in some of the sequences. Entertaining... heck, yes. This is another nice little horror movie from somebody who obviously knows their business. I liked this one quite a lot. If you can find the right movie called Host (there’s even more than one movie called this released this year, for goodness sake) and you are a fan of horror movies... and perhaps more so if you are not and are not especially familiar with the tropes of the genre... then this one is really worth checking out sometime. Also, it’s very short at 57 minutes so, you know, easily time to fit it into your day. Give it a go.