Host

Host (2020) runs fifty six minutes, was shot entirely over Zoom, and was made in the middle of lockdown. Six friends are bored during the shutdown and hire a medium online to hold a séance over Zoom. One of them does not take it seriously and invents a story for a laugh. What follows is familiar: whatever was called has come. What makes it special is how it was made. Rob Savage shot it during the first lockdown of 2020 and the team was never in the same room. The actors set up their own cameras, lit themselves, and executed most of the effects in their own homes. A stunt coordinator directed the movements over video call. The constraint serves the film. The screen aesthetic does not feel like a gimmick, because at that moment everyone's life was already inside those windows. Zoom's background filters, frozen frames and dropped connections are used as horror devices. The short length is deliberate: the free version of Zoom cuts a call off at forty minutes, and the film is built around that. Savage got into this through a prank; a short scare video he made for friends on Zoom spread online and led to the film. It runs 56 minutes. Good for: found footage horror, short and concentrated films, and as a document of the pandemic. Less good for: the jump scares are relentless, there is a suicide, and anyone who dislikes screen based storytelling will struggle.