Over the last few years, “desktop movies” – films like Unfriended and Aneesh Chaganty’s elegant thriller Searching – have told feature-length stories entirely through computer screens, with characters hopping between apps to communicate and solve mysteries. Turns out, the spirit-world by and large prefers not having the piss taken out of it, and responds in due course.įor every element that borders on cliché, though, there’s another that’s brave and new. When Scottish spiritualist Seylan (Seylan Baxter) joins them to begin the seance, a drinking game involving a shot every time Seylan says “astral plane” leaves some in fits of giggles as the door to the spirit-world is creaked open. There’s laughter before you’re sent leaping behind the sofa: Host takes its time setting up the gang’s friendships and lockdown situations, even squeezing in a joke about etiquette in the pandemic era (you used to have to cough to cover up a fart now it’s the other way round, one character bemoans).
The film wastes no time in introducing you to its convincing cast of characters: a group of university friends who, presumably bored of baking banana bread, decide to pass the time by summoning the dead instead. The bad news is, you might not sleep for weeks after it.
The good news is that the time you accidentally turned your camera on during a check-in with your boss, revealing yourself to be still in your pyjamas at four in the afternoon, covered in Doritos crumbs and regret, will suddenly seem small-fry compared to the remote-video-call catastrophe here. It’s not connection issues or a family quiz stretching on for eternity that’s the problem in Rob Savage’s Host, however: shot remotely during the coronavirus crisis, this Shudder Original horror is a seance story for the Stay At Home generation, pitting six quarantined friends against a demonic presence who invades their houses after a Zoom conference goes spectacularly wrong. As we’ve all learned in lockdown, Zoom calls can be pretty hellish.
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