It’s not long before a visitor from the spirit world takes offence to a glib ruse by one of the participants, and thus a rampage of shadowy terror begins. The film is presented in desktop vision, and we have the unique vantage of being able to see the faces of all the actors, head-on, throughout most of the runtime. As a little bit of no-frills fun, six friends (five female, one male) decide to give their weekly Zoom catch-up call over to a mumsy medium named Seylan who leads them in what she claims to be a friendly, candle-lit jaunt over to the astral plane in search of the dearly departed. Though there is no such live gimmick in Rob Savage’s impressive horror quickie Host, the spirit of Castle lives on in this film’s commitment to trading on banal physical experience and close-to-home frights, which is in this case enforced communication via digital video platforms. His 1959 film The Tingler, for instance, saw viewers potentially being planted on a seat that had been fitted with an electric buzzer for added experiential shock. The late, great showman director William Castle took incredible pains to add little, fourth wall-breaking novelty extras to his films, as a way to enhance the screening experience for thrill-hungry patrons.

Innovative tech-powered horror miniature which trades on the hazards of the pandemic lockdown.

The host zoom movie