I unironically and unabashedly love the “screen-footage” films like Searching, the Unfriended movies, The Den. Host slides in among them nicely, while offering some unique twists of its own. The virtual seance during COVID lockdown is a really excellent setup for (i can only hope) one of the few “made during quarantine” movies I ever see. The performances are shockingly top-notch for a film like this, and really sell the panic and danger. The fear on their faces feels real, and sells the scares as more than mere jump scares. Many times I felt my heart racing. Some of the logic within the movie doesn’t hold up terribly, and we have our “why is this character taking her laptop for a walk” opening. My only real complaint is the moments we see the entity. Less is more, and we should’ve seen less. The floating mask filter was a far more frightening effect than the entity itself. One last note, this movie is 56 minutes long. It takes good advantage of those 56 minutes, but I feel like they could’ve fleshed out some of the reasoning and increased the two “suddenly absent” characters to a point where they matter. In all, a cracking good time, and not a bad way to spend an hour of quarantine at all.
