Meanwhile, Caroline (Caroline Ward) jumps in with her T-zone masked up because her pores aren’t doing well in lockdown with her parents. Radina (Radina Drandova) pops in with a cough in a time of COVID and is quarantining with a recent boyfriend who is already getting on her nerves. First we get Jemma (Jemma Moore), the impatient jokester who lives near Haley and Emma (Emma Louise Webb) who loves to mess around with silly face filters, but is a little nervous about conjuring spirits. We’re quickly introduced to the sixsome as one by one, the friends pop into the Zoom meeting hosted by Haley (Haley Bishop).
The premise is delightfully simple: Six friends get together to do an online Zoom séance. Zoom meetings self-destruct and, in that spirit, Host wastes no time getting to the spooky. Host does so much with so little and goddamn is it one of the best found footage films I’ve seen. So imagine my surprise when I sat down to watch this unassuming Zoom horror film and found myself screaming and clapping as the movie ended. I went into Host with this mindset, thinking that while it would capitalize on our current situation, it’d be another found footage disaster that’d continue to fuel my bias towards them. It was only a matter of time before someone came along and used that as a horror movie gimmick. Because of social isolation, life continues to become more and more online, with friends reaching out through Skype or Zoom or other video apps to keep in touch, watch movies or play games. It’s an experience I find myself desperately missing, some six months into a quarantine that has destroyed localized communal movie watching. I still remember my first experience with Paranormal Activity, sitting in a theatre packed to the brim with fans, just eating the scares up. Once in awhile, though, a director knows the limitations and benefits of the filmmaking style and can handily take advantage of the medium to really turn the screws and scare the shit out of you.
But I also always approach them with trepidation because the horror genre is littered with terrible knock-offs and poorly executed films.
I also appreciate the way it allows filmmakers to experiment and work within smaller budget parameters. It’s such a specific way of filming that, when done well, can be creative and spooky. If you follow me at all, you know that found footage isn’t really my cup of tea.
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