Film Review: Host – 7.5/10

‘I think there’s something here…’

I’m not sure if just under an hour actually constitutes a film, but I know from experience that if I put anything about a short film in a review title then absolutely nobody will read it, as my short lived and long forgotten feature Short Film Sunday can attest to. Host is low budget, not quite a feature in length, and features a cast of utterly unknown actors, and yet, it is the first great horror film to stem from the anxiety of our current global pandemic…

Haley (Haley Bishop) and her friends are sick of doing Zoom quizzes during lockdown, so instead they decide to employ a medium to help them through an online seance. Things soon take a turn for the worst when the dead begin to feel disrespected. Never disrespect the dead my old grandma might have said once.

Premiering on horror streaming service Shudder, Host leans into lockdown life without banging the audience over the head with it, hopefully ensuring that this won’t feel horribly dated once we can all go back to touching each other again. While there are shades of other films in this genre (most prominently the Unfriended franchise), Host is visually innovative enough to stand out from the crowd, pulling out all the stops to create an atmosphere that begins in the computer screens of six strangers and eventually creeps out into your home (or a movie theater if director Rob Savage is lucky). The result is a film that feels fresh as a daisy, but also comfortably familiar. Standard horror tropes are employed, but they are utilised in way that is compelling rather than jaded, and the inexperienced cast throw absolutely everything into what is essentially a series of interwoven one man shows played at the same time.

As I’ve said many times, horror is having a moment right now, and while Host is not quite in the same league as Get Out or Hereditary, it is still another exciting footnote, and an important landmark as we await the great wave of Covid horror films that are surely lurking just around the corner. Enjoy this one while the idea is still novel.