HOST
Director Rob Savage and writers Jed Shepherd and Gemma Hurley chart the astonishing rise of their DIY horror
Lo-fi, high-concept: inside 2020’s best horror.
CALLING ROB SAVAGE, Jed Shepherd and Gemma Hurley on Zoom takes some nerve. They are, after all, the creators (director and writers, to be precise) of last year’s home-made horror sensation, Host, the terrifying tale of a friendly Zoom call that gets interrupted by a death-dealing demon. It was one of the first movies conceived, shot, edited and released during the global pandemic, and is unequivocally the kind of movie that could, in the wrong hands, have gone disastrously wrong. It could have been a cheap, tawdry, nasty reminder of the hellscape in which we all found ourselves last year.
Yet, anchored by genuinely excellent and affecting turns by its mostly female cast, all of whom were good friends of Savage and Shepherd in real life, and injected with real momentum, inventive scares and a palpable sense of dread, it was simply one of the best British movies of last year. And it does it all in 56 gloriously efficient minutes. Starting out on the subscription horror website Shudder (who stumped up the cash to fund the shoot), it quickly broke out, as is evident in its brief cinema outing and now a bells-andwhistles Blu-ray release. But it’s not the only breakout — Savage, Shepherd and Hurley have announced themselves as talents to watch, and were quickly snapped up to make three movies for Blumhouse Pictures, the first of which is already in post-production. Here are the highlights of our chat with the trio. Ouija board not necessary.
Host has made one heck of an impact. Did that surprise you? What were your expectations?
Rob Savage: The truth is, I never thought about that at all. If I had any kind of expectation, it was that horror fans would enjoy it, but it would maybe be seen as a gimmicky, opportunistic, fun little one-off. But the gift of this movie was having something to do in lockdown and having something to do with my friends, and to feel creative while I was boxed in that house on my own. If I’d have even thought beyond that, it would have hurt the movie.
Jed Shepherd: All I had to gauge it against was what’s happened before with our short films. We had praise within the horror industry, but it never broke into the mainstream. I assumed this would be the same thing, and that’s why we’re quite shocked how big it was. People assume all the horror films come from America, and we never really see horror films from the UK get noticed. Gemma Hurley: It’s weird looking back to that time. We’re still in it to some extent, but we really didn’t know how bad things were gonna get. Was anything ever going to be filmed again? So it was quite scary. And then we entered this wonderful, joyful two weeks where we got to muck about, making each other laugh, and watching horror films I’ve never seen before, like Paranormal Activity 3 and Lake Mungo. Savage: And Ghostwatch.
Hurley: Yeah. I had no expectation.
Was there a ‘pinch me’ moment, when you knew it was breaking out? Shepherd: For me it was almost day one.
When it dropped, some of the press were saying such nice things. “It’s the scariest film of the decade”, and, “As important as The Blair Witch Project”. Stuff you’d never think in a million years you’d hear about something that you’ve done. I don’t think my film’s as good as The Blair Witch Project, but for some people, for the next generation, this might be their
Blair Witch Project.
Hurley: It’s all been such a blur. We’re still experiencing this through our screen, so there’s no real-world context or feedback for what any of this means, or how it’s changed our lives in any practical way. The strangest moment was when we all went on BBC Breakfast.
Savage: The most special moment for me was when we were all able to attend a few of the special screenings at the BFI. Just being there in a room full of strangers and hearing them all laugh and scream, and just looking down the row at each other, knowing that we all made that together, that’s what it’s all about.
What’s it like watching Host with an audience? Does it change the experience?
Savage: The interesting thing is that I honestly had no idea that it was a scary movie. I knew it had scares, and moments that would make people jump, but I didn’t know that it had an atmosphere, and that when people would watch it, it would linger with them after. I don’t think you get that in the cinema, in a weird way. But in the cinema it’s much more of a fun roller-coaster ride. You scream, and then you laugh. It’s a more joyful experience in the cinema. It feels like two different films.
Shepherd: At home, the whole conceit is that it’s a Zoom call that you’re part of. It makes you feel it’s authentic, they feel like your friends. In a cinema, the communal aspect made every joke amplify, so there’s a lot more laughs in the cinema.
How aware were you of the dangers of making a film during the pandemic? Not in terms of shooting it safely, but in terms of audience reaction. Giving people a story that felt very much like their own experiences, only without the demon, could have backfired.
Hurley: We were very aware that there was a very derivative, exploitative version of this film, and we didn’t want to do that. We consciously moved away from making it a pandemic movie, and more about a group of friends who just happen to be in lockdown.
Savage: I wouldn’t want to watch a horror movie about an infectious disease right now. But there’s a lot to be said for the ramifications of being cooped up for a year, and the paranoia that brings. It was all that stuff we wanted to tap into. We didn’t want to make it an issue movie. But there’s something worthwhile about planting a flag and saying, “This is what it was like to be around during the first lockdown.” It was fucking weird. And it was about making it feel as authentic as possible. That’s the real joy of working off a beat sheet, rather than a full script. The movie had a really tight structure and I knew where every scene needed to start and end. Within that, we’d always say, “What’s the movie version of this scene? Let’s do something else.”
Shepherd: But it’s a horror filmmaker’s dream to have an organic excuse for people not to be able to run outside and escape the terror. That was one of the things no-one really questioned: “Why don’t they just run outside and escape?”
Savage: If a demon showed up on this call right now, I’d fucking run.
What was the writing process like?
Savage: We knew we were gonna work on a beat sheet, not a script. One of the things we’re really good at is coming up with set-pieces, and confounding expectations that genre fans might have. And it’s really easy to lose some of the things which make things work. Do you care about the characters? Does the plot work? Gemma reminded us what was important,
and what was going to make the scares land, which was the characters. The narrative has become that Gemma does the characters and we do the scares, which isn’t true. Some of the best scares have come from Gemma. But Gemma is really good at being able to take the wider view and say, “Calm down guys, let’s make sure people give a shit.”
Hurley: I haven’t seen too many films, let alone horror films, where it’s about a group of female friends. Apart from The Descent, you just don’t see it. To me, that was such a joy to have that opportunity to show a dysfunctional female friendship. It’s so unusual to see a bunch of normal people. Jemma [played by Jemma Moore] is sometimes annoying and sometimes goes too far, but you still love that person. And they’re your friends.
Shepherd: These girls [Haley Bishop, Jemma Moore, Caroline Ward, Radina Drandova, and Emma Louise Webb] have been subjected to mine and Rob’s short films for years, so it was great to put them in something that everyone gets to see. They really deserve it.
Did you know they would spark off each other?
Savage: The girls are some of our closest friends. If we were going to do a feature film, it was going to be about them, so let’s build the film around them. What makes them inherently interesting to watch, we were able to click into that relatively easily. And then it was a case of what outside elements we needed to bring in. We spoke to our stunt team and our prosthetics people about what we could conceivably do shooting remotely. And from there we built out the scares and character trajectories. Teddy [played by Edward Linard] really came from that. We knew that people would be watching this film, knowing how we made it in lockdown, with fairly low expectations. On paper, it sounds like a really shitty idea. And we wanted there to be a moment where they went, “Holy fuck, they’re not fucking around.”
Which was the moment where Teddy gets set on fire?
Savage: [Laughs] Which was Teddy. Emma had no idea any of that was coming. She didn’t know that Teddy was a stunt performer. So when we played in that footage of him having his face set on fire, she genuinely had a fucking freakout.
Shepherd: Emma still watches Host every single day. She watched it this morning at 4am. And after Host, she was scared of her own house for a while, so she would stay up until the sun came up, and then she knew she was safe. I sent sage to her house so she could burn it every night. Didn’t work.
And now you’re deep into making your second movie together. That Difficult Second Album is coming up.
Savage: This movie is not going to get 100 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m going to tell you that up front. It’s going to divide people. But I think it’s better than Host. It’s a more interesting, more challenging movie, but at the same time, it’s going to piss a lot of people off.
Shepherd: It’s not a reaction to Host, either. It’s an idea Rob and I had before Host. We’ve always wanted to make this movie, and now we can.
It’s good to see you’re striking while the iron is hot. You’re not taking a Kubrickian nine-year gap. You’re barely taking a nine-week gap.
Savage: When you make a movie in 12 weeks, you start to feel very antsy when you’re not doing anything. There are so many 12-week periods in my life where I did fuck all, and I could have made a movie. So now we just want to see how many we can cram in.