Ghost in the Machine: Savage Speaks to the Moment with Creative Horror

In what plays like a logical extension of the found footage subgenre, UK director Rob Savage creatively channels our current global quarantine realities to craft a technologically savvy rehash of familiar supernatural tropes with the ‘live footage’ mid-length film Host. The length of a Zoom meeting in which six friends deign to embark on an online séance which goes, of course, horrifically off the rails, is as efficient a low-fi horror invention since 1999’s The Blair Witch Project allowed for a redefining moment in genre possibility.

Haley (Haley Bishop) has orchestrated a séance over Zoom, to be attended by five of her other friends as they all deal with the ongoing quarantine due to COVID-19. Jemma (Jemma Moore) lives nearby, but as the first friend to join the meeting, we pick on some tension between the two women. They’re soon joined by Emma (Emma Louise Webb), Radina (Radina Drandova) and Caroline (Caroline Ward). As we get brief glimpses into their home lives, the final participant Teddy (Edward Linward) arrives shortly before the medium, Seylan (Seylan Baxter). Technological issues coincide with a fake situation orchestrated by one of the members, and with Seylan unable to reconnect, something indeed seems to have been conjured when they contacted the spirit world. But it’s not something which seems very friendly.

Much like the inventive and efficiently paced Searching (2018) starring Jon Cho, Host takes place completely within the confines of an online platform, incorporating, as best it can, the limitations of such technologies for communication. While it’s a narrative which remains chained to these parameters, it’s an inventive exercise and one which, perhaps in retrospect, will continue to evoke particular fears and anxieties which redefined global interconnectedness in 2020. However, Savage’s script, co-written by Jed Shepherd and Gemma Hurley, could have used some introductory tweaks as far as the rationale for the séance and just a bit more efficiency in introducing and defining some of the characters.

As it stands, much of the success of Host depends on the performances of the five women who remain on-screen for most of the film. With most of them playing characters who share the same first name, each performer gets a moment to shine, though unfortunately it’s when each is visited upon by distressing, violent happenings.

What Savage really understands is by showing less, we imagine so much more, and though there are nightmarish glances, Host feels like the modern-day creative equivalent which defined the low-budget offerings of producer Val Lewton in the 1940s. As the mostly-absent medium, Seylan Baxter (one of the witches from Justin Kurzel’s re-staging of Macbeth in 2015) is also effective, for it’s not so much the ludicrousness of this environment or these beliefs, but channeling the proper mood when we understand and empathize with those who do. And while it’s first half hour might end up feeling a bit tedious, like attending a useless Zoom meeting, Host pays off in its final ten to fifteen minutes with inventive considerations and definite visual panache.

★★★/☆☆☆☆☆