The creative constraints of the early Covid era, forcing writers and directors to maximise the minimalism of remote production, led to an inevitable and seemingly inexorable dip in quality. Stories were told on laptops or phones or both at a time when most of us wanted to escape the exhaustion of life lived on a screen, not embrace it, the overwhelming majority offering nothing more than a depressing reminder of how incredibly small our world had suddenly become.
But fresh young British director Rob Savage, using the same base tools as his far more experienced peers, found a way to turn our eyerolls into wide-eyed admiration with his ingeniously effective horror Host. Based entirely on Zoom, it told the story of group of friends who decide to do a guided seance online, and while not a single viewer will be surprised about how this turns out to be a very, very bad idea, the ways in which it descends into chaos do prove at times genuinely unexpected. It was an imperfect film but a perfect calling card, showing how much Savage can do with so little. While his rushed follow-up Dashcam was a total, at times embarrassing, bust – messy and saddled with a wildly grating lead – his closely followed Hollywood debut still arrives with more expectation than most studio horrors despite the conventional packaging.
