phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2020

Host



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2020
Runtime: 57min
Country: UK
Language: English
Genre Tags: Horror, Mystery
Plot Summary: Six friends hire a medium to hold a seance via Zoom during lockdown, but they get far more than they bargained for as things quickly go wrong.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: Filmed during COVID lockdown, a sceance goes horribly wrong over Zoom. Suprisingly gripping, with a very realistic feel. The short runtime helps keep the pacing brisk. Sidenote: Technically, there isn't a title card for this film, but this shot does say "Host" while she's setting up the meeting.


Outside Reviews:

Simon Abrams
2.5 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

Host, a new horror movie about a haunted Zoom meeting, is decent, as far as high-concept genre exercises go. It's only 56 minutes long, features some cool practical stuntwork thanks to the team at Lucky 13 Action, and is surprisingly not overbearing in its depiction of the Way We Live Now during the COVID-19 pandemic. Co-writer/director Rob Savage's supernatural calling card movie is a fine enough way to kill an hour, which is about as long as an episode of prestige TV. Host doesn't really need to be better than that, though its creators' modest ambitions probably won't blow you away either.


Randall Colburn
One of the best horror movies of the year is, of course, about a haunted Zoom chat

Savage finds novel ways to mine horror (and humor) from custom Zoom backgrounds and the glitches that routinely plague group chats - not to mention the 40-minute time limit that applies to free accounts. His film works not despite but because of its presentation. The greatest criticism we can lodge at either the found footage or desktop genres is the "why" of it all; for as clever as the John Cho-starring Searching was, for example, it ultimately didn't need to be told through webcams and digital video. Host does. It's all about the isolation of lockdown and the terror of realizing your home is no longer a safe haven. Our devices, meanwhile, become our only portal into the lives of our companions, and that simultaneous sense of intimacy and distance is never so pronounced as it is when the person on the other end is in trouble.