It didn’t come as a surprise that someone was able to take advantage of the pandemic and lockdowns to create a film using that as its backdrop. What did come as a surprise was how quickly they were able to do it. Host was written, filmed, and launched just a few months after lockdowns started.
Similar to the Unfriended films, Host is a film that takes place completely on a computer screen and a video chat. Zoom has been the pandemic video chat service of note and Host utilizes that to good effect.
The premise is pretty simple, six friends get online to have an online seance. The group is warned by the medium to treat this with the utmost of respect but we all have that friend that doesn’t follow the rules. Because they weren’t all taking it seriously the group accidently invites a demonic spirit to the party. As you can probably tell, things go south pretty quickly and considering the under an hour runtime, pretty quickly is the general pace of the film.
There are a couple high tension scenes that work really well but it follows a pretty typical route for films of this nature. As our protagonists get offed one by one things escalate into more and more elaborate spectacles but that is pretty much all there is to the film. Thankfully the effects are fairly solid throughout but the film isn’t going to win any awards for most gruesome deaths. But considering this was a remote shoot with the director and crew having to explain how to set up shots and special effects, everything is fairly impressive.
But it’s not so impressive I’d watch this again on my own. It’s perfectly fine for what it is and I absolutely love the short length (no need to pad out bullshit for characters we don’t give a crap about and will be dead 5 minutes into the shenanigans anyway, give us the premise and jump in to it). However, if you are still socially distancing and keeping a lockdown lifestyle, this works well enough to pass the time.
3*
