However, they realize too late that the spirit communicating them is not friendly and may even be demonic. Even thought its lean and mean 57 minute running time makes for a tight, entertaining spooky romp, I almost want more time to spend with the characters to truly care about them.Īs the night trudges on, weird things happen to each of the participants as Seylan guides them through the motions of contacting the astral plane. However, its subversion of the horror genre-using tropes and characters from a slasher-fuels its plot more than the more straightforward ghost story of Host. That film, like Host, took place completely on a video call. In 2015, Unfriended, at least in my opinion, became the first horror movie to properly capture the digital era of social media and the culture around it. 💌 Sign up for our weekly email newsletter with movie recommendations available to stream. Also like many of us, they’re short of things to do to fill their time, which is why for this week’s call Haley ( Haley Bishop) hires a Seylan ( Seylan Baxter), a medium, to hold a seance during their call. In a setup familiar to many of us, Host centers on a group of friends during their weekly Zoom calls to keep in touch-and stay sane-during the pandemic.

In that vein, Host, a new techno horror movie streaming on Shudder, is the first movie to take place during these uncertain but certainly terrifying coronavirus times-and it’s only fitting that the entire film takes place on a Zoom video call. And while the pandemic has certainly been horrifying, it’s surprising that the first take on our new era is a horror film.Īs we dive further into a tech-first world, the horror genre has grappled with how to tap into our inherent fear of the technology around us. It was only a matter of time before the coronavirus pandemic, one of the largest cultural, societal and political events, of our time was captured on film. Movies respond to things going on around us-whether cultural, societal or political. Chloé Zhao makes Nomadland‘s melancholic but hopeful story of nomads traversing the American West a stunningly complex character study of life on the margins of society.

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