Review: ‘Host’ perfectly captures paranoia of quarantine

You don’t need demons or ghosts to scare you in your own home. The settling of creaky floorboards, unexplainable bumps in the night, and eerie wind gusts will do that for you. Layer on a mandated quarantine, due to a global pandemic, and you’ve got the recipe for self-inflicted paranoia and existential dread so relentless, time and space mean absolutely nothing. Director Rob Savage’s Host revels in such claustrophobic and psychological hellishness in a way most found footage or computer screen horror fail to do.

Savage (Dawn of the Deaf) surgically picks through the subconscious and reapplies one’s distorted perceptions through a heightened, mentally-aggravated state. A brisk 56-minutes, Host centers on six close friends, who hop on a Zoom call to catch up and perform a little séance ⏤ which, on its surface, is mere child’s play. But the thrill lies in its execution, and its high-voltage pace leaves little room for filler. The fact the narrative unfurls mid-pandemic, with references to mask-wearing, elbow-greeting, and keeping a close eye on elders, is only background noise, yet it contextualizes the urgency and emotional helplessness the characters must suffer.

The cast, who filmed and performed their own stunts and scares in their actual homes, essentially play fictionalized versions of themselves. Haley Bishop (Deep State) initiates the evening, wanting her closest friends ⏤ Radina Drandova (Dawn of the Deaf), Edward “Teddy” Linard (The Rebels), Jemma Moore (Doom: Annihilation), Caroline Ward (Stalling It), and Emma Louise Webb (The Crown) ⏤ to experience a séance for the very first time. Haley even enlists a medium named Seylan, a dear friend of hers, who’d previously conducted similar communication rituals, as their trusted guide.

The proceeding soon goes off the rails, naturally, sucking you into the maddening descent in a similar fashion as The Den and even Unfriended. The camaraderie is infectious and immediate, and as the night (and mayhem) wears on, the viscerally provocative performances hook and drag you in. Themes of isolation, perverse fascination with the other side, and human connection ride right on the surface, so it’s as if the actors themselves are finally expressing their own deeply troubling delusions and fragile mental states which have devolved in the last five months.

Host isn’t about reinvention as it is about culling the best parts of found footage. Savage, who never once set foot “on set” but instead directed remotely, keeps the story tight and the characters’ relationships tighter. The darkness suffocates, too, and what you think you see or hear transcends right through the computer screen. (I literally kept looking over my shoulder every few minutes, feeling a pair of devil’s eyes somewhere just out of reach.) If you’re open to it, Host can be a cathartic, I-can’t-believe-this-pandemic-is-still-happening valve release.

Host hits Shudder this week.

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