In April 2020, British writer and director Rob Savage made a joke to his Zoom friends with concern for an extraordinarily intelligent live jump and captured their reactions on Twitter. Three months later, Savage released Host, a (almost) complete film about the Shudder streaming platform, which extends its farce to one of the most productive examples of the 2020 transmutation of the terrifying realities of technology, the coronavirus and this stupid friend in a well. timed escape. Entertainment.
– Rob Savage (@DirRobSavage) April 21, 2020
Note that the presenter is “almost” complete doesn’t mean it’s been designated as a short movie, but that he’s realized how excited the story is at a run time of less than an hour. The film uses every minute to set up its characters, omens and twists while leaving time for extraordinarily violent horror. Savage is no stranger to tight scripts, as he has been critically acclaimed for his previous horror short films Dawn of the Deaf (2016) and Salt (2017), however, Host stands out for getting the price of a full movie on the external time restriction of a non-subscription Zoom call.
The host’s premise revolves around an organization of friends who gather in Zoom to stay in touch as they take social distance from the coronavirus pandemic. One of the friends, Hayley (Haley Bishop), tense but justified, organizes the assembly as an “online consultation,” asking a psychic to offer discreet emotions to her friends. The query works as well as any query in a horror movie, although the host is far from typical in its unique brightness and performance.
The host is typical in its unique brightness and execution.
Although Host is placed on a computer screen, it feels different from previous horror attempts on a laptop, as its main photograph took place using the devices used through the characters. In an interview with SF Chronicle, director Rob Savage explained that he had received permission from Zoom to use his software in the film, taught actors how to set up fantasy effects with fishing ropes, and directed their performances via video chat. Its original technique is filtered into Host’s definitive product, making its quality even more impressive.
Also noteworthy is the quality of the host actors’ performances, some of whom are the same people savage completed in his original Twitter video. Its herbal functionality and typical hourly jokes met social distance in the early moments of the film numb them in a sense of familiarity, making the growing terror of the evil spirit that haunts its characters even more terrifying. Watching Host on a computer or pill adds to this feeling, especially framed through the actual Zoom interface and amplified through occasional decreases in service quality in video and audio quality.
There is an apparent but undeniable metaphor in Host, a metaphor that arises as the characters are only in Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Without spoiling too much (and the maximum of this is in The Film’s own description through Shudder), Zoom’s query is only done because a character doesn’t take the stage seriously.
This character, like those who insist that his companions overreact to the existing pandemic and behave according to this belief, is guilty of the carnage that affects vigilantes, the frightened, accomplices and the innocent. No one is when a user mistakes a risk for a joke, whether the risk is viral or paranormal.
The host now in Shudder.