![]() After Jemma manifests a horrifying poltergeist, each character dies off one by one until there are only two left. Host follows a group of friends who connect through a Zoom call in order to have a sance to fight off the boredom of quarantine. Shudder’s Host follows a group of friends, each sheltering from the pandemic, as they conduct a virtual seance over Zoom. One can relate to the fury the poltergeist unleashes, thrashing apartment objects about. In fact, it's the movie's simplicity that makes it substantially better than Social Distance. If that is not enough, the seance over Zoom has the potential to be a fun premise. She befriends Helina ( Ella-Rae Smith) but instantly gets on Alices bad side. That in itself is enough to bring curious audiences to the picture. Camille ( Suki Waterhouse) arrives to fill Kerries place at the exclusive school. As we sit at home with the devices that promised us limitless possibilities in our hands, “Host” identifies the uncomfortable in-between state we exist in, operating ghostlike. In SEANCE, at the Edelvine Academy for Girls, a cruel prank performed by Alice (Inanna Sarkis) causes Kerrie (Megan Best) to plummet to her death from her dorm window. But while the unhappy ghost wreaks havoc, the yearning for collective activity simmers beneath the film’s lo-fi aesthetic.Ĭhanneling the spirits of the dead, on the internet no less, becomes a useful analogy for mourning the recent past. Savage makes common Zoom call interruptions, like strange noises and glitchy video, play double duty as both red herrings and supernatural disturbances. ![]() ![]() As Haley (Haley Bishop) gathers a group of friends to speak with a medium (Seylan Baxter), the unleashing of an angry demon seems to speak to a collective id. Streaming on Shudder, the film makes easy observations about how the pandemic has changed the most mundane activities, but perhaps contains even greater insight. Rob Savage, the director and co-writer of “Host,” finds a surprising amount of ingenuity in mining the horror of yet another quarantine conference call. If the future of filmmaking is remote and socially distanced, a Zoom séance isn’t such a bad place to start.
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