I think you need to turn off the phone audio

Starting my trip up Empire's top 20 films of 2020

#20 : Host

Here's a film that could truly only have been made in 2020. For most movies, the Coronavirus pandemic halted production – but for Host, it made it possible. Writer-director Rob Savage, and co-writers Jed Shepherd and Gemma Hurley, cooked up an ingenious lockdown horror presented as one terrifying Zoom call – and who can say that they didn't have one of those this year? Host's simple online-séance-goes-awry premise delivers more than its fair share of supremely inventive jolts, tailor-made to Zoom's video-call features, right down to its brilliant final credits. And for all its serious spooks it's laugh-packed too, with pitch-perfect performances from an utterly believable ensemble cast. The inevitable prospect of 'pandemic horror' wasn't exactly enticing – but Host made it essential, offering up one of the most complete and satisfying filmic experiences of the year in a runtime under an hour. We rate the quality of this call very, very highly

None of the films up next on my current lists were quite hitting the spot for me, so I thought I'd start a new list - the Empire lists are working quite well, so let's move another year backwards (OK, mostly because it's I wanted to watch this).

I don't need to tell you anything about the plot because, as Empire says, it's a "simple online-séance-goes-awry" done over a Zoom call. It's starts off completely normal (and very relatable) and just build and builds - the tension is done really well. It actually works really well over Zoom because even on the most mundane of calls, spooky weird shit happens and no-one's ever entirely sure why. It's fair to say that things are taken to a whole new level here though - and it works very well. But it also manages to gets a surprising amount of humour in there (although I'd struggle to say it's "laugh-packed"), a really neat ending and great credits - and all in under an hour.

Surprising amounts of the film have no dialogue and it works really well - it obviously lends itself to jump scares! And there's no horror film cliché unused here, but it actually manages to work in some new ones around Zoom - there's a really good use of filters in there which is surprisingly spooky.

So, it's a neat idea but it would have been easy to do it very lazily and that's definitely not the case here - the execution is really well done. Yes, there's some licence taken in some places, but most of the film is presented via the Zoom interface, which is far too relatable. The acting is also impressive - there's no one stand-out member of the cast so let's just give a shout out to Haley Bishop, Jemma Moore, Emma Louise Webb, Radina Drandova, Caroline Ward and Edward Linard. All of whom did their own own camerawork, sound, makeup, lighting and stunts - this really is a child of the pandemic. 

And whilst it would have worked equally well as a film before the pandemic, it's not surprising that it took off as a result of it - everyone could now relate to the horrors of Zoom calls! It's a lot deeper than that though because it ties in to the isolation that everyone was feeling. The separation of time does reduce its relevance and I also suspect that a lot of people have no desire to be reminded of those times but, despite my usual reservations about horror films, I really quite enjoyed this both from in terms content and implementation. If you fancy a scary trip down memory lane, then it's available to stream on Shudder (you've got that, right?) or to rent in all the usual locations.

#18 - Fine