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Host: in horror, you shall know thy limitations
I thought the most terrifying thing about this movie made entirely on Zoom would be me recalling my day job. I was wrong.
Horror, for me, is perhaps the hardest possible genre any filmmaker could hope to tackle. So many variables combined with so little information about what exactly makes us humans feel dread, means it will be a tough assignment for any director to keep his/her viewers at the edge of their seats.
You know what’s impossible? Knowing for a fact that single factor, effect or method that will guarantee sleepless nights in your audience members.
The reason is very simple. What makes YOU, dear reader, piss your pants in fear will be completely different to that of a complete stranger half-way around the world. Mexicans fear witches. Romanians fear vampires. Germans fear Budweiser. You simply cannot know what scares the shit out of your next door neighbor.
This is why I approach horror films with both a cynical but forgiving attitude. Unless the movie is so bad it makes me want to stab myself with the remote control; if a film doesn’t scare me, I seldom call it a failure. It’s more in the lines of “it just didn’t do it for me.”
For some wicked reason, the film Host by Rob Savage really REALLY worked on me.
