Zoom Zoom Zoom Zoom, Don’t Want You In My Room
by Wrongtom
Who’s Zoomin whom? Not me. Not much anyway. I think I can count the number of group calls I’ve made via Zoom on one hand, and that’s in total, not just during lockdown. Most of you probably aren’t as technophobic as me, and I hear you’ve been having big nights in with your gang, throwing Zoom parties, doing quiz nights, and generally waving two fingers in the face of that fun-sucking virus.
I have an aversion to video calls. In fact I’m not a big fan of talking on the phone, preferring to chat in person wherever possible, so lockdown wasn’t a lot of fun in that respect. I’ve done a few, of course. My one and only business Zoom involved my friend Chris suddenly distracted by his daughter appearing outside his office/shed wielding boxing gloves, and when I had a post-birthday Zoom with a couple of mates, my friend Al brought along Iron Maiden’s mascot, Eddie. The violence of home-schooling and even the number of the beast have all been present in my Zoom experiences and, quite frankly, it terrifies me.
So, as I sat cowering in fear of video calls and evil spirits, I was delighted to find that a guy who I’ve followed for years on Twitter had compounded both for a brand new film which he produced during lockdown. Jed Shepherd had been Zooming with his filmmaking friends for a few weeks when director Rob Savage decided to prank everyone by investigating strange noises coming from his loft. The result went viral, and soon they had the formula for a feature film which they signed to AMC’s horror streaming service Shudder.
Host captures a peak pandemic evening in real time as friends Haley, Jemma, Emma, Caroline, Radina and Teddy throw a Zoom seance. It’s a Corona-era twist on classic found-footage horror, a genre known for embracing limitations, and while that’s normally due to lack of funding, Savage and co pulled this one together within the constraints of space, and the need for distance, with actors working alone in their homes, filming themselves from jerry-rigged cameras attached to laptops, and applying their own makeup and practical effects under guidance conducted via my arch enemy, Zoom.
Covid barely features in the tale, bar a few familiar nods, like bumping elbows as a greeting, or the grave response when someone sneezes, but as we’ve all been living amongst an unseen malevolent force for so long, it functions as the perfect backdrop as Haley and her friends attempt to contact the dead. To tell you more would spoil the fun, but perhaps the one take-home here is to respect our invisible nemesis, and I promise you it’s genuinely terrifying in places, even if you’re not already petrified of Zooming.
Beyond the scares, it’s fun trying to imagine how it got made. You might assume this is a cheap and clunky low budget shocker, but the intricacy of invisible cuts and visceral effects is as remarkable as anything you might have seen in Mendes’ 1917 or Iñárritu’s Birdman. The performances are all great too, in fact my main fear when facing a low budget Brit horror is the hammy am-dramness of it all, but here there’s nothing to worry about, it’s so natural and casual that you could be there Zooming with them, which only adds to the dread.
If you’ve caught any of Savage and Shepherd’s previous collaborations, you’ll know there’s some pedigree to this venture. Savage has an array of shorts behind him, writing and directing his debut feature Strings while still in his teens, he’s more recently sat in the director’s chair for Sky’s sexy druid opus Britannia. Shepherd’s credentials are a little more curious, with ventures like his cassette-only label Post/Pop, and as executive producer on Birdemic 2, the no-budget sequel to James Nguyen’s eco-nightmare Birdemic: Shock & Terror. Together, however, they’ve crafted a handful of shorts including Absence starring Paul McGann, Salt with Alice Lowe, and their disability-focussed take on the zombie genre, Dawn Of The Deaf.
*Trailer voice* In a world overwhelmed with pedestrian zombie films and tv shows, two guys breath new life into an otherwise rotting genre.
In just over 10 minutes Dawn Of The Deaf tackles issues of abuse, disability, sexuality, and features queer main characters — played by Haley Bishop and Radina Drandova from Host (Caroline Ward also stars) — who are soon surrounded by savages infected by a sonic pulse. We’re left hanging, and I’d love to see a full length version with the rest of the Host cast included. It’s a familiar yet radical spin on an otherwise hackneyed genre which, I’m sorry to admit, even it’s great architect George A. Romero struggled with when attempting to resuscitate his own franchise with the found-footage of Diary Of The Dead.
Diary had its merits, it simmered with Romero’s usual socio-political subtext, but fell flat due to being light on actual scares. It was also pipped to the post by a British found-footage zombie flick called The Zombie Diaries a year or so prior which had the opposite problem to Romero’s outing, being a little too bleak for its own good, though it does feature veteran actor Leonard Fenton aka Dr Legg from Eastenders.
I’m suddenly aghast at how many half-baked found-footage horrors I’ve sat through. There are some greats, of course. REC put the serious frighteners on me, not least because that night our cat chose to run riot, furiously scratching around the room above our bedroom, I barely slept a wink. The Blair Witch Project has its detractors but I found it pretty creepy on first viewing. Less successful was Cloverfield which had the PRODUCTION VALUE! (channeling Charles from Super 8 here) but presented a group of twenty somethings so vacuous that I was willing them to be eaten alive before the monster even interrupted the opening party.
Blair Witch appears to be the zero point for a lot of found-footage fans, but it dawned on me I’d enjoyed these films for a few years prior. The Last Broadcast was a fun, if less slick Blair Witch exercise with a similar theme, and Man Bites Dog remains a hilariously brutal satire, right up until it’s a little too brutal to be hilarious. Stray snatches of found-footage crop up elsewhere, like the final 8mm sequence of Linklater’s Slacker, or way back with the tacked-on ending of Michael & Roberta Findlay’s ill-fated Snuff. In fact, I remember first hearing about snuff films in the mid 80s when my mum made the mistake of (briefly) sending my brother to a fee-paying school where she taught, and he came home claiming a rich class mate was in possession of one of these mythical VHS murder tapes. A massive porky, my dad assured us, but looking at the gaggle of public school ghouls now running our country, I do sometimes wonder.
Ur-found-footage monstrosity Cannibal Holocaust remained banned in the UK until 2001 when I finally picked up a copy, watched it once and quickly put it back down. My intro to the genre, it turns out, was probably the earliest example, and not a horror at all. The Connection by experimental filmmaker Shirley Clarke, was made two decades before Cannibal Holocaust and opens with a claim that you’re watching the found-footage of a JJ Burden who was filming the antics of heroin addicted jazz musicians for a documentary maker named Jim Dunn. As events unfold, and the junkies wait for “the connection” — an unsavoury character known as Cowboy who arrives with their fix — it becomes clear that director Dunn has an agenda. He supplies money for the junk, and attempts to show them how to act natural for the film, unaware that JJ’s camera is still rolling.
The release of The Connection was a watershed moment for film censorship after Clarke filed a suit for it to be released in New York where it had been banned, not for it’s casual depiction of drug abuse, but thanks to the word “shit” being used eight times, mostly in reference to the smack they were injecting.
The Connection is also groundbreaking for its film within a film, later aped by the unrealised documentary within Cannibal Holocaust which similarly transcends the ethics of documentary making when it’s fictitious crew stage a massacre by torching a hut full of natives. Both question the role of the documentary director, but Clarke does so in a far more elegant manner. It also features a cool bop score by pianist Freddie Redd who originally appeared in the off-Broadway stage show which Clarke adapted for the screen.
That’s not to say Cannibal Holocaust doesn’t have a great soundtrack. I’ve taken the liberty of shoehorning in another playlist featuring woozy synth tracks from some of my favourite zombie/cannibal movies, video nasties and the usual schlock my brother and I would pick up from the video shop in the 80s. Much of this is now available again thanks to the fantastic freaks at Death Waltz Recordings.
Host may well seem like it has more in common with grindhouse and exploitation movies — I’ve certainly had a few chats with Jed Shepherd about our mutual love for the lurid post-apocalyptic valley girl outing Night Of The Comet — but in many ways their collective work harks back to Clarke, with minority representation, a strong female presence, and an inventiveness within the constraints of the tumultuous times in which we’re currently living.
It won’t take you long to watch Host, much like a free Zoom session it mercifully cuts off around the 50 minute mark, so sign up to Shudder now!
