HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: Host (2020)

Our sponsor today is my friend, an actor who is perhaps best known as the most kick-ass cheerleader of them all, Kelli Maroney! Kelli, besides being a great person all around, remains exceptionally busy.  Her most recent films are the Lovecraft adaptation The Deep Ones, presently making the film festival rounds, and the upcoming retro alien invasion flick The Video Store.  If you’re near Santa Ana, California, she will be appearing along with Jim Wynorski, Russell Todd and Steven Mitchell at a screening of Chopping Mall at the Frida Drive-In Theater on October 16th, with a Q & A before the screening and in-person Zoom calls in lieu of signings.  You can learn about these things and other news from her website (kellimaroney.com), her Facebook (Actress Kelli Maroney), Instagram and Twitter (both @kellimaroney).

Kelli is representing The No Kill Coalition, a organization of animal shelters that work to protect and advocate for shelter animals.

Kelli chose for me the first horror film shot entirely on lockdown, a...found footage? film available now on Shudder called Host.

Haley (Haley Bishop) and her friends are getting together on Zoom to break up the boredom of lockdown by having Seylan (Seylan Baxter) conduct a seance.  Haley’s very insistent that everyone takes this very seriously, but Jemma (Jemma Moore) isn’t having that, pretending to have contact with a boy who was kind to her known as ‘Jack’ to scare everyone.  Unfortunately, as Seylan explains, by making up a persona Jemma has ‘created a mask’ that any floating spirit can put on.  And it’s becoming more and more apparent that the spirit that has picked up Jemma ‘mask’ is not nice a’tall.

Host is shot entirely through Zoom, and almost entirely indoor--those scenes that are outdoor appear to be in isolated (and presumably socially distanced) areas save for one involving Jemma that is, shall we say, risky.  You’ll notice that most of the characters have the same name as the actresses playing them--a conscious callback to The Blair Witch Project--and there are some scare moments that do resemble such found footage milestones as Rec and Paranormal Activity.  But director Rob Savage and writer/producer Jed Shepard also manage to put in some novel touches to the framework into this to make it stand out.  Perhaps the coolest touch is, by expressedly making the ‘delivery system’ of the piece a Zoom meeting, it not only grounds the film but gives Shepard and Savage some leeway to do certain things in a cinematic way that other found footage films could not--primarily editing between the multiple viewpoints.  They also use the Zoom medium to provide the film with a ticking clock and set up rational ways to explain tropes that might otherwise be an annoyance to me.

My biggest problem with the found footage sub-genre, which was a constant presence in theaters in the late ‘00s to early ‘10s, was that most of the films used the storytelling technique as a gimmick to tell stories we’d all seen before.  And while Shepard and Savage's story here is basic, I suspect there is more to them other than following a trend.  Little touches pay off in a way that amplifies the atmosphere.  A closet door opening up and spilling out stuff because it’s badly packed in in the beginning pays off later on...Hell, something as simple as establishing the nervousness of Caroline (Caroline Ward) pays off when we see her reaction shots as the tension ramps up.  And they utilize a couple of the features of Zoom to their advantage, using one to set up a really cool, unsettling and quiet scare and another to create an extended sequence that is novel, scary and also strikingly cinematic.

Yes, Host is a story told many times before, but it’s a story told many times before in a way that it hasn’t been told before, and that’s what I think will make it stand out among the pack.  It’s a very short watch (due to the ticking clock that’s established in the beginning--but we lose track of until it’s too late), and is an example of how you can use new technology to tell stories in original ways.  As I mentioned before, it’s available on Shudder, and I do recommend it.

Tomorrow’s sponsor is a friend whose latest film, Widow’s Point, is available right now on VOD, Amazon, Walmart and Direct Discount DVD and is the man behind the Buffalo Dreams Film Festival, Greg Lamberston!  Like last year, Greg is reaching back to the near-forgotten genre of the Made-For-TV Horror Movie with a look at one of Stan Winston’s earliest make-up jobs, contributing the titular Gargoyles in this 1972 oddity starring an overdubbed Bernie Casey, Cornell Wilde and Jennifer Salt’s inappropriately 70‘s blouses!

There are Ten Sponsorship Slots Left in the Halloween Horrorfest this year.  To claim one, do one of four things:

1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

As with last year, if I end up with more sponsors than there are days in October, I will go into Horrorfest Overtime, which means Halloween goes into November for me--and you!