Host, the horror movie released in August 2020 pivoted off what many people were feeling around the world. People everywhere in isolation lockdown turning to online chat as a way to hang out. The Host is not a new idea nor does it have high-concept special effects or a complicated narrative. But if you’re like me, and think that horror movies based on supernatural events are a good way to spend the evening, Host Movie 2020 is streaming online and one that is worth your time.
A bunch of friends hosts an online event on the chat platform Zoom. The setting feels natural and there isn’t a lot of background needed to feel the friendly chemistry between the six friends. A medium they hired brings an extra dose of respectability to an otherwise odd pastime.
Host Movie Review
With a runtime of only 57 minutes, HOST doesn’t get much time to create tension. Pacing is kept to a strict timeline which enables the supernatural horror movie to drop plenty of creepy atmospheric scare in heavy doses. The audience sees some spectral presences long before the cast does. And it creeped me out.
Horror tropes always have a place in my heart if utilized in a way that ups the ante. The rules of certain activities like seances have a way of becoming tired but in Host, the process is tweaked at just the right angle to freshen up the idea. Gone are the Ouija board and rickety table and spates of gusty wind. In this story, the online setting makes everything that little bit scarier. In addition, having each participant alone in their own home allows for some added hair-raising occurrences.
Scary Movie, Host How to Watch
Host 2020 is streaming on:
Host Movie Cast
The Host movie cast features all relatively unknown actresses and one actor who are all predominately listed under a bunch of short films. The medium is best known for small bit-parts in Dr. Who and the TV mini-series The Victim, Seylan Baxter.
The cast all go by their real-life monikers sans their last name which makes it all the more exciting for an indie production to have a solid cult-fan base. The film holds a 93% satisfaction rating on Rotten Tomatoes and almost a 7 out of 10 on IMBd.com.
Performances all around were fantastic and believable which just added to the overall paranormal meets cyber online universe essence.
- Directed by Rob Savage.
- Written by Rob Savage, Gemma Hurley, and Jed Shepherd.
Host is rated
4 Never leave your Facebook filters on in a seance of 5
The Best Cyber-Based Movies Like Host
Of course, there are other movies with similar storylines like the Host movie. In the horror niche, here are a few well-known and not-so-well-known movies that feature killers on the internet. These four movies are like the Host 2020 and feature narratives that involve online technology.
Searching
Rated highly and spoken about often, the film Searching is labeled as a thriller. Don’t be fooled though, as the horror genre is always evolving. In its very definition horror evokes a feeling of fear, sometimes disgust, and often shock. This is a whole storyline centered around a missing 16-year-old. In the film, her father tracks and traces her last known footsteps. Distraught he breaks into her laptop and finds things he’d never thought he’d ever see.
The Net
One of the earliest and best films centered around cyberspace is also billed as an action-drama, The Net. Released in 1995 the story involves a computer programmer who is essentially wiped off the face of existence by hackers. If the thought of having your entire identity erased and altered doesn’t frighten you, then perhaps you’re stronger than me. The film is not terrifying in the scare-the-pants-off-you tradition that a horror movie should be but I know plenty of horror movies that certainly weren’t as terrifying as this movie.
Pulse
Released in 2001, Pulse is a Japanese book adaptation. The film was remade in 2006 for U.S. audiences but the original movie was determined as the better of the two. Consisting of two stories, the plot for both hinges on ghosts just like Host entering the world via the internet. Friends go missing and things are teased as not quite right rather than the storyline lumping a whole bunch of jump scares in your lap. An atmospheric tension that seeps into you over the course of a very long run-time.
Hacked aka The Den
As a matter of fact, The Den is what I would consider a hidden horror movie gem. Told in the first-person narrative, Elizabeth studies the hows and whys of chat room users. Set up as a found footage scenario, Elizabeth gets more than she bargained for when she happens upon a murder. Hacked is definitely a flawed film, however, sometimes the best types of movies are.
