10/6: Host

 

10/5

Today's horror movie was the perfect movie for our time: Host, a movie completely shot on Zoom. In fact, as far as I know it's the only movie with any sort of wide release (if you can call a release exclusive to Shudder wide) to be filmed during the depth of quarantine. All things considered for a movie shot on Zoom... it's surprisingly good.

Now, of course, we have to set our expectations here. Host has all the limitations of Zoom and clocks in at under an hour, which honestly at that runtime, can we exactly call it a full length movie? With our expectations set though, I think that what was achieved was actually pretty remarkable. All the stunts and special effects had to be done by the actors in their homes with direction from the director, Rob Savage. This makes them all the more impressive as they're just as good for the most part as anything you'd see in a multimillion dollar movie. 

The plot itself is quintessentially 2020: a group of friends decide to have a via-Zoom seance that invites a demonic presence into their home. Chaos, of course, ensues. There's some solid jump scares and unsettling scenes, even if beyond the concept the plot itself is pretty weaksauce. It's this fact that is the biggest missed opportunity of Host: beyond the scares, beyond the feat of creating a film completely on Zoom and in the depth of quarantine, there's really nothing deeper. It's not like Savage didn't have the space either; he literally could have added 20-30 minutes of plot and made something that fit the marvels of the film's creation. 

With that said, most of this rating is based on the feat of the movie over the quality of the plot. It certainly helps too that this is a movie extremely of it's time, a space of fear that I feel that we all can collectively feel together as a society. Which is actually pretty damn cool.

8/10