Rob Savage’s ‘Host’ became one of the most talked about horror films of last year by being one of the first that could include the coronavirus crisis as one of the key elements in its plot, and although the director presented his new film at Sitges 2021, his debut film continues to be talked about as the Science of the Scare project has determined that it is the scariest film of all time.
A study that is more of a walk-at-home experiment than a science, since the list of movies to watch was made up of a tiny and very doubtful sample of 40 titles, supposedly the most relevant, which were placed in a ranking according to how they affected viewers, taking into account different factors such as heart activity. After choosing ‘Sinister’ (2012) by Scott Derrickson in 2020, this year the data sample has been updated, increasing the number of participants five times from 50 to 250, resulting in ‘Host’ being the winner.
The film is made up entirely of a Zoom call where a group of friends do an online séance and accidentally invite something scary into their homes. It only lasts 56 minutes, in which it gives time to different scares and chilling appearances with a crazy climax with some scenes with specialists, prosthetics and some moments of impact that made the title a small achievement to be shot with social distancing.
A generic interface found footage
Savage previously made only a few short films, commercials, and television work.He came up with the film out of the need for a distraction during quarantine, and it came about without a closed script beyond the concept, in which the first act is a séance, the second more. disturbing and the third pure madness. All accomplished in front of the camera with some visual effects to hook up and clean up rigging. The proposal within the pandemic and its duration were two advertising elements that made her appear in mainstream media such as Good Morning America to the New York Times, and then go viral on Shudder.
‘Host’ is a much more ordinary proposition than your onslaught of hype can make it sound, perhaps caused by factors such as the lack of premieres in the second half of the worst year in recent history and the massive access to social networks at the height of de-escalation, but it falls sympathetic due to its condition of cinema made by fans for fans, which plagues the screen of small references, such as the mask from the movie ‘The face of death’ (1976) or nods to ‘Ghostwatch’ (1992), a reference to the film (and to a large part of the found footage genre).
However, cold, the movie abuses enervated screams on webcam and decent but repetitive VFX alongside an expired catalog of Routine and familiar bad habits from the interface found footage that does not add anything to what the two surprising installments of ‘Eliminado’ (2014) offered. They were already making a new version for Skype of the chilling ‘The Colinwood Story’ (2020), the original unknown of this subgenre who did it with the Messenger webcam. Maybe we will have a new movie of the style every time there is a new video application.
Nevertheless The greatest achievement of ‘Host’ was that his film during the confinement, was released and seen in a month after finishing production by catching a wave of zeitgeist of the moment that can hardly be reproduced today. There are many stories to tell in a world that has suffered the impact of Covid-19, the question is whether the public is looking for light entertainment to distract them after the stress of the pandemic or if they really want our current global situation to be addressed, to treat to overcome our fears related to the New Normal
The gift of opportunity
The difference is that ‘Host’ was in a precise moment, with something devastatingly identifiable, with characters looking helplessly at digital devices, observing how their friends are punished for something invisible, creating fear of the feeling of disconnection caused by quarantine, and the insecurity of being separated from the people we care about. Whether those images create something defining that year or not is more questionable, since we lived connected to screens before the pandemic and we continue to be today.
The opportunity was important and the own lukewarm reception of ‘Dashcam‘(2021) at festivals this year, with 56% on Rotten tomatoes and 45 on Metacritic, indicates that the reception of Savage’s new work no longer has the same complicity of critics. And it is that only within the found footage genre in 2020 there were much more surprising and stimulating proposals such as the intelligent one ‘Death of a Vlogger‘(2020) or the very relevant’ Murder Death Koreatown ‘(2020), a reflection of the Qanon culture that would take relevance in the taking of the Capitol.
Perhaps the true legacy of ‘Host’ is reflected more in cH ow has been misperceived by producers and creators that movies about lockdown may be timely about to enter 2022, and for better or for worse we are in the midst of productions such as ‘Songbird’ (2020), ‘Isolation’ (2021), ‘The End of Us’ (2021) or ‘The Bite’ (2021 ), which begin to compete not only with other films of the same style, but with our experience, because now we all have our history of quarantine and it is not necessarily useful to experience that of others while we can be on the street without fear.