Host goes from 0 – 100 in its first fifteen minutes and never lets up so you can collect yourself.
Gemma Hurley, Rob Savage, and Jed Shepherd’s lean script takes a different approach. Found footage films tend to be excruciating slow-burns that save all the “good stuff” for the final ten minutes. The main reason Host works so well is because it clocks in at just under an hour, and doesn’t waste a single minute. I’ll say this upfront: Host wipes the floor with most found footage flicks – It’s one of the year’s best horror movies. Instead of summoning a friendly spirit, they invite a demonic presence into their homes. The group hires a psychic medium to lead them through a ghostly encounter, and it doesn’t take long for things to go off the rails. The group decide to spice up their dull lives by hooking up in a Zoom call to gossip, drink, and… speak to the dead. For them, being stuck at home for months is like doing time in a Soviet Gulag. And who can blame them? The young and hip pack of millennials are in the prime of their lives.
Haley (Haley Bishop), Jemma (Jemma Moore), Emma (Emma Louise Webb), Radina (Radina Drandova), Caroline (Caroline Ward), and Teddy (Edward Linard), are tired of life in quarantine. The result is a hair-raising horror-thriller that delivers some of the year’s best scares. Host’s director, Rob Savage, examines the horrors of life in quarantine – the entire film takes place on a Zoom call – but ups the ante by adding a supernatural twist. Movies like Host are the reason I don’t give up on this wildly inconsistent genre. So when you give an innovative filmmaker a clever premise and then let them run wild with found footage’s verité style, the result is exhilarating. Almost anyone can shoot a found footage movie, but few people can make them well. When these movies do work, they offer one of the most electrifying experiences in all cinema. Which leads us to one obvious question: why do I keep watching found footage films?
I’ve lost count of how many times I finished a found footage flick wishing I had the last 80-minutes of my life back. Too often, movies in this genre boil down to the same irritating clichés, like watching the camera shake all about as scared people run around in the dark and scream. Even when these films have a promising set-up, they rarely deliver on their potential. As a horror die-hard, I’ll be the first to admit that watching a found footage movie always feels like a gamble.
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