The movie takes place entirely over the course of a meeting between friends over Zoom, the video chatting platform that took off during quarantine as friends and offices searched the Internet for a way to stay connected all you see is what's visible in the chat windows onscreen, in the same vein as other 'computer screen films' like 2014's horror movie Unfriended and 2018 mystery thriller Searching. Leave it to movies like Host, which made its debut over the summer on Shudder and is now on VOD, to remind us that, even within the safety and mundanity of our own homes, there are still plenty of things to be afraid of.įilmed over the course of just 12 weeks and set right in the middle of quarantine, Host is the 'most 2020' movie to be released this year - and perhaps will remain the most 2020 movie of all time. Maybe a lot of us are so sick of it all that we'd rather go about our daily lives again, pretending it doesn't exist. For those of us who haven't been expected to go into work every day, be on the front lines fighting COVID-19, or have caught the virus ourselves, it's mostly been super boring and more than a little lonely to be cooped up indoors over the nicest part of the year.

More than half a year into a nationwide quarantine, the '2020 feels like a horror movie' comparisons have gotten more than a little stale.

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