Host
Directed by Rob Savage
- horror
The story
Six friends hire a medium to hold a séance via Zoom during lockdown — but they get far more than they bargained for as things quickly go wrong. When an evil spirit starts invading their homes, they begin to realise they might not survive the night.
What it’s like
Screen-sharing grids and laptop glow carry nearly all the light: cold blue monitor brightness on faces lit from below, bedroom shadows, the occasional lamp-warm room cut against the flat white of a webcam feed. The framing is pure found footage, a fixed view of a single screen or a bedroom corner, with compression artifacts, frozen frames, and lag that makes every reaction arrive a beat late. Sound does most of the work: tinny laptop audio, sudden distorted crackles, creaks from rooms that never show their source, and a sparse, unsettling electronic drone that surfaces only when something has gone wrong. Vibe: lockdown-era dread, claustrophobic and jittery, with the wry chatter of friends who are bored and a little giddy before the mood curdles. Intensity is high in short, sharp bursts: jump scares, a few grisly sights and shrieking, some physical violence and self-harm-adjacent panic, but no sexual content and little gore beyond what the scares demand. Pacing is brisk, under an hour and a half, built on escalating rule-breaking and mounting panic, with the friends' bickering and guilt giving the scares emotional weight. Not for anyone wanting gentle viewing; it suits a late, alone night with headphones, or fans of tight, real-time found footage who enjoy horror that feels uncomfortably close to home.
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