How ‘Host’ director Rob Savage created the ultimate quarantine horror hit
Rob Savage is living the dream of any horror filmmaker. Make that nightmare. When Yahoo Entertainment reaches the British director behind the quarantine-era horror hit Host, he and his producer, Douglas Cox, are in the middle of their very own scary movie. While scouting spooky middle-of-nowhere locations for Savageâs next project â one of three planned features for prolific horror producer Jason Blum â the duo stumbled upon what looked like a drug deal in progress, and are currently speeding away from the scene, possibly tailed by gangsters. âWe drove away really fast, and a car has been following us for awhile,â the director says, laughing. âI think weâve lost it now, but itâs quite good that youâre calling, because at least there will be a record of it! You can dedicate this story to my memory.â
If this really is Savageâs last ride, at least heâs going out on top. Since its July 30 debut on AMCâs popular horror streaming service Shudder, Host has become a viral phenomenon in our coronavirus times. Boasting a 100 percent criticsâ score on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as enthusiastic social media reviews from scary movie-loving civilians, the hour-long film has emerged as the Zoom generationâs answer to Paranormal Activity. Unfolding over a single video-conference call, the film revolves around a bloody-minded spirit stalking the six tight-knit friends who have unwisely invited it into our realm via a sĂ©ance session. Itâs an (almost) feature-length version of a Zoom prank that Savage pulled on his own pals â many of whom are in the movie â early on during Londonâs COVID-19 lockdown. âI scared them with a pre-existing clip that I managed to play [during the call] without them realizing. I wanted to carry that idea into a movie.â
Even though Hostâs scare factor is significantly heightened by the pandemic, Savage pointedly didnât want to make a pandemic movie. âI don’t know if anyone wants to see that for the time being,â he explains. âEveryone watched Outbreak and Contagion at the beginning of the pandemic, and I think thatâs plenty. I’d be surprised if audiences started flocking towards infection horror anytime soon. We wanted Host to be a movie that was set during lockdown and reflected how we’re living at the moment, but also offered a bit of escapism. Itâs kind of like a horror roller coaster, where we didn’t want to touch on the virus itself so much as the texture of lockdown living.â
Host may use Zoomâs interface â with the express permission of the teleconferencing company â but the majority of the movie was actually filmed on iPhones that Savage distributed to his cast. âWe had them tape the phones behind the laptop, so the phone camera was pointing out right over the top of the laptop camera, and then I was on Zoom to monitor it all,â he explains. âWe ended up not using any real Zoom footage in the movie at all! Bizarrely, so much work went into just making it seem like we pressed record on a Zoom call, but there’s about 4,000 individual assets that we had to create and time out specifically.â
In classic horror movie tradition, Host starts quietly and then builds to a frenzy of paranormal violence. But the shoot itself happened in reverse, with Savage remotely directing all of the big scary stunts upfront. âWe had access to a house that was filled with stunt performers and stunt coordinators that were all isolating together,â he remembers. âA lot of the stunts were doubled, with hidden cuts between the actorsâ houses and the stunt performersâ houses.â
That approach meant that the production was able to abide by Englandâs quarantine restrictions, although those guidelines loosened enough during shooting that the stunt performers were eventually able to visit the actorsâ houses, under the supervision of an on-set medic who took temperature checks and ensured that everyone remained socially distanced. âThere was never any direct contact,â Savage says. âWe found creative ways to make sure everyone was safe. For example, the actorsâ partners would be the ones to rig them into their stunt suits.â
Those stunts have been wowing horror fans with their potent mixture of old-school practical effects and digital assists. Early on in the film, the host of the doomed Zoom call, Haley (Haley Bishop), is dragged backwards in her chair by the malevolent spirit â a tease of whatâs to come. âIâd love to take credit for that, but Haley pitched that to us,â Savage says. âShe just sent me this video of her sitting at her desk, and all of a sudden she gets pulled back and slammed against the wall. Her boyfriend had some climbing ropes, and they tied it around the chair and figured it out themselves. We based the whole turn into the second act around that moment.â (Bishopâs boyfriend â or more accurately, his elbow â makes a cameo towards the end of the film, standing in for the elbow of a friend who comes to check on Haley. âThatâs why sheâs got a really big, thick arm for one moment,â he says, chuckling.)
Related: New horror film ‘Host’ filmed mostly on Zoom
In another scene, nervous Caroline (Caroline Ward) has her head repeatedly bashed against her computerâs keyboard, her bloody face periodically breaking through a Zoom background that shows her in happier times. âCaroline was sent all these prosthetic pieces by our special effects guy, Dan Martin, and had a Zoom tutorial about how to apply them. For the stunt, she slammed her head down into a little pillow that sat on top of her keyboard a couple of times, and then weâd pause and sheâd apply the next part of the prosthetic â a broken nose or a slash on her face. We spent almost a whole day slowly building up that prosthetic and getting all the bits we needed for that sequence.â
Two of the more complicated, and freaky, on-screen deaths were performed by Edward Linard and Jinny Lofthouse, the only stunt performers who also have speaking roles in the movie. Lifted into the air by the rampaging spirit, Lofthouseâs neck is broken and then she drops into a swimming pool. âWe were able to rig a kind of goalpost over the pool, so sheâs lifted up by a wire and thereâs a quick release. When we pressed a button, she plummets.â Meanwhile, her on-screen boyfriend is set on fire â a stunt that Linard happens to specialize in. âWe hired him, because we knew we could set his face on fire,â Savage says, laughing. âBut none of the cast knew that he was qualified to do that! So when we set his face on fire in front of them, they were genuinely freaked out and didnât know what was going on.â
In fact, Savage purposely kept the cast in the dark about all of the scary stuff theyâd be seeing, mimicking the original prank video he made. âWe filmed all the death scenes individually, so they had not idea what was going to happen to any of the other cast members. Later on, I was able to go on a group call with all of them, and then pump that footage back into the Zoom call without them realizing they were watching pre-recorded footage. Their reactions as a group were often totally authentic: those are mostly first-take reactions to the crazy stunts we managed to pull off.â
Of course, there were times where their reactions werenât shocked enough. One sequence that proved particularly problematic was the big reveal of the spiritâs âfaceâ â actually a mask that Savage swiped from the cult 1976 slasher film Alice, Sweet Alice. âI always loved the mask in that,â he says, referring to the translucent mask worn by the filmâs titular killer, played by Paula Sheppard. âNot enough people have seen the film, so I figured I could steal it without anyone noticing. They did, of course, but weâd already gotten away with it scot-free by then! The funny thing is that our VFX guy had to go into the Lens Creator app that exists with Instagram and make it as a fully-functional Instagram filter, so I think you can still find it on Instagram somewhere.â
Because that particular visual effect was accomplished in post-production, the cast didnât have the benefit of reacting to Savageâs deep-cut homage. âThey were reacting to an empty space, and I was on the Zoom call saying, âThe mask is turning now, and itâs terrifying,â and making nosies. It never quite worked, and we had to piece the scene together from a lot of micro reactions drawn from different takes.â
Another tough-to-film scene between Haley and her friend Jemma (Jemma Moore) â whose flippant attitude towards the sĂ©ance opens the door for the spirit to walk through â didnât make the final cut at all. âRight before Haley gets dragged into the darkness towards the end, there was meant to be a much more emotional confrontation between her and Jemma where we dig into the backstory a bit about where their beef comes from. It felt like too much of a movie moment; we shot it a bunch of different times, but then I cut it and I never missed it. I think when youâre being chased by a murderous demon, thatâs not the time for unspoken feelings!â
As evidenced by his terrifying location-scouting trip, Savage wonât have to stay inside his house to make his first Blumhouse feature, but heâs still planning on carrying over some of the lessons he learned on Host to future projects. âThe big realization was that not being in the same physical space together ended up being a benefit. Shooting everything remotely meant that anyone with a working internet connection could suddenly be part of our movie, and we were able to work with collaborators who never would have been free if the industry was up and running. Like when that light bulb explodes in one of the girlsâ apartments, that was actually filmed miles away on the other end of the country by a special-effects person. And then an hour later, I was able to drop it into the film. I think thatâs really exciting â it opens the world up.â
Host is currently streaming on Shudder.
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