HOST

(director/writer: Rob Savage; screenwriters: Gemma Hurley/Jed Shepherd; editor: Brenna Rangott; cast: Seylan Baxter (Seylan, medium), Haley Bishop (Haley),  Jemma Moore (Jemma),  Emma Louise Webb (Emma), Randina Drandova (Randina), Caroline Ward (Caroline), Alan Emyrs (Alan), James Swanton (The Spirit), Patrick Ward (Caroline’s dad), Jinny Lofthouse (Jinny); Runtime: 56; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Emily Gotto/Douglas Cox/Samuel Zimmerman/Jed Shepherd; Shudder; 2020-UK)

“This supernatural thriller, a found footage horror film, gives you some scares.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

This supernatural thriller, a found footage horror film, gives you some scares. It’s one with only modest ambitions that are easily met. Rob Savage (“Strings”) directs and co-writes with Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd. It has some decent set pieces but its presentation is ham-fisted.

It tells of six friends-Haley Bishop, Radina Drandova, Caroline Ward, Jemma Moore, Emma Louise Webb and Edward Linard, who gather together during a pandemic lockdown for their weekly Zoom call and for this week, Haley, the group’s instigator, has brought in the mystical medium Seylan Baxter to conduct a seance.

The result is that this collective activity, probing for the spirits of the dead on the internet, unleashes an angry ghost raging on the Zoom call and starts destroying objects in the apartments of the players. The message delivered seems to be telling us we have developed in recent times so many tech advances to make our lives so much more enjoyable but still cannot avoid unknown dangers that can suddenly come into our life.

At only 56 minutes, the usual time of a TV thriller show, the short film is good enough to sketch out a plot for a high-concept horror film that hammers home the point that being respectful of the dead and having high-tech won’t ensure you have a safe future.

REVIEWED ON 8/13/2020  GRADE: B-