During this meeting, Rob began investigating strange sounds he was hearing in his attic, followed by a very frightening jump scare featuring a “creature’s face.” After this successful test, Rob released the video online and it went viral. Rob Savage claims that he was originally inspired to make this movie after he filmed a prank on some of his friends he was meeting with on Zoom. Shortly afterward, Seylan is disconnected and the remaining five friends begin to experience paranormal activity in each of their homes. As the séance progresses, Teddy leaves due to issues with his girlfriend, which breaks the circle the friends had created for protection. She invited friends Jemma (Jemma Moore), Emma (Emma Louise Webb), Radina (Radina Drandova), Caroline (Caroline Ward) and Teddy (Edward Linard) to join. Hayley (Hayley Bishop) hired a psychic medium named Seylan (Seylan Baxter) to lead it after some strange events occurred in her apartment. Written by Savage, Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd, Host focuses on a group of friends hosting a séance online. And with such new notoriety, director Rob Savage found inspiration for his film. Zoom has seen a huge growth in 2020, as it has filled in the void of group social interaction that was missing. The app supports text, vocal and video chat, so it brings all the technologies people use in the business world, with the ease of apps like Snapchat. The platform allows users to host meetings with others using their computers or mobile devices.

In the post-COVID world, almost everyone has had interaction with Zoom. They are all sitting in their own homes, using the mobile meeting app Zoom to conduct this paranormal experiment. But the twist is that this group is not sitting around a table, holding hands and listening to the psychic communicate with the dead. The premise is nothing new: friends get together to conduct a séance that ends up going wrong.

Originality died long before COVID came into play.īut Shudder has taken the idea that movies just cannot be made during a pandemic and put it on blast with their new exclusive film, Host. And yet all we seem to have been getting are new versions of older films. It seems that they just cannot create films that people will want to see without massive sets, thousands of crew members and tons of writers sitting in a room, taking months to produce and finally getting the finished product to theaters.

With no end in sight, Hollywood has had to push movies further and further down the road. The Coronavirus has affected the entertainment industry like it has the rest of the economy.

Horror film zoom call