HOST (2020) HORROR AT QUARANTINE TIMES. MOVIE REVIEW.

Opportunistic sense.

The COVID pandemic has profoundly affected the lives of all people on earth. The global security measure of not maintaining contact with more people to reduce the possibility of contagion sending everybody into quarantine. This situation caused that the number of virtual meetings increased exponentially  Director Rob Savage, with a great sense of opportunism, couldn’t have chosen a better time to create his latest production Host.

A group of friends has a virtual meeting in ZOOM, and to get out of boredom they are going to hold a seance through a medium they are inviting. Haley, the meeting host, strongly emphasizes taking the session seriously. As expected, one of the participants does not follow this recommendation. This disrespect brings the invoked spirit of an evil nature, much to the terror of all involved.

Evil Host and small beginning.

Host director and writer Rob Savage already had the idea for the story before the pandemic. He had previously made a short film, in which he invited some friends to a zoom meeting and in which he pretended that he was being attacked in the attic by a strange force. Savage did not tell his friends of this joke, to get a real reaction out of them. The result of this short was so good, that Savage published it and it went viral. With this video as an introduction letter, Savage approached Shudder to produce a full-length movie with the same concept.

Timely release

The premiere of Host in Netflix could not be more timely due to the seclusion that the whole world lives through during the pandemic. We see the entire film through a zoom PC screen, giving it a greater and familiar effect to all viewers feel familiar with the quarantine that is experienced worldwide.

The fact that the film was released in July 2020, just a few months after the start of the quarantine, lets us see how fast the film’s creative process was. The actors were given great flexibility to improvise. Actually, the names of the characters are the exact real names of the actors in real life. All the actors do a compelling job showing the horror and distress they are facing.

Short run time. Straightforward story

The greatest achievement of the film is in its rhythm. The intensity of the encounters increases little by little, and these events can be seen by all the viewers at the same time through the screens of the participants. Seeing how the characters are entering an anguishing spiral of despair at the same time along with the audience is an achievement of how straightforward the script is and how successful is the editing work. Of course, this situation is aided by the short duration time, which is slightly less than an hour. With no time for added baggage, the story has to go straight to the point.

Effective SFX

The special effects are mostly good, although there are others that you can see that could require a little more work. Due to the short production time they had to take advantage of the quarantine situation, which at that time it was not known how long it could be extended, it is understandable why not all of the SFX look as polished as others.

Same concept done right.

The concept of paranormal appearances through a meeting between friends online is not new. It had already been dealt with in the movie Unfriended (Leo Gabriadze 2014). But certainly, Host manages to take the idea to a better port. Despite falling into several typical cliches of the genre, Host is a small production that has well-defined what it wants to do and its scope. Its short duration time caused Savage to take a more practical approach and get to the point fast in what he wanted to tell. Host effectively achieves its established goals with moments of tension and a couple of good scares.

Delirium Score