Haley (Haley Bishop) organises a seance over a zoom call with her friends during lockdown. However when Jemma (Jemma Moore) disrespects the spirits by making up a story about a lost friend they get more than they bargained for. 

Host has an incredibly simple and lean story structure. Six friends join a Zoom call, have a medium join them to walk through the process and provide snippets of exposition and things go bump in the night. It has hugely effective jump scares, some fantastic performances and runs at only 57 minutes. 

There are three films that it uses as touchstones. Just like the excellent thriller Searching the filming and presentation is entirely via the technology being used by our protagonists. We only see what their laptops or phones see and the credits are even a list of participants on the Zoom call. The scares that the women are experiencing are evoked in very much a similar fashion to 1999’s The Blair Witch Project. If there is anything that film proved it is that incredibly scared, weeping women whispering into a camera in extreme close up is scary. Whilst the fixed camera views and objects moving in the background owes something to Paranormal Activity. 

The performances from the friends are all fantastic from actresses that are all relatively unknown. Haley Bishop, Jemma Moore, Emma Louise Webb, Radina Drandova and Caroline Ward all put in convincing performances of friends trying to connect in difficult times and find themselves petrified of what they have unleashed. 

Co-Writer and director Rob Savage has launched himself onto the horror scene with a bang after a number of shorts.