Interview: Rob Savage
It’s hard to believe that Rob Savage, Gemma Hurley, Jed Shepherd, Douglas Cox and Brenna Rangott’s Host was released exactly one year ago today. A lot has undoubtedly happened since but the sense of time itself has been immeasurably warped by the pandemic we have been experiencing, making days seem like hours and hours like minutes. It’s a sentiment director Savage more than agrees with. “The weird thing about lockdowns is how time gets kind of compressed and rejigged,” he remarks. “We’ve shot another movie since then but it still feels like we only shot Host a few months ago even though it’s been well over a year. It feels like all those lockdown hours really don’t really count, you know?”
Nonetheless, Host made its debut on Shudder on July 30, 2020 and today marks its first ever anniversary. Upon its release, it was met with unanimous acclaim from critics (it currently has a rare 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences alike, breaking records on Shudder and making endless Best of 2020 lists from publications both major and minor, including Time Magazine. While the film’s roots can be traced back to a viral prank video that Savage uploaded to Twitter in April 2020, racking millions of views across several different platforms and possibly giving an indication of how warmly Host would be received, Savage says he still couldn’t predict the massively positive response it has gotten. “I really thought the movie was going to get dismissed,” he reveals. “That it was going to get ignored. I knew it was something that was going to be on Shudder so I knew the horror fans would get it, you know? They might have a little fun with it and then a couple weeks later, they’d forgot about it. It was really made with no expectations, which is why I think we were able to make something we’re really proud of and that people were able to respond to.”
Savage’s concerns were partly based on the fact that the film was entirely filmed on Zoom, a platform that is practically synonymous with the pandemic at this point. But back then, no one could’ve imagined how big of a part it would play in our daily lives. “We thought, ‘Are people really going to care about Zoom a couple of months from now?’ We thought people might see it in the first few months, because they can point and say, ‘Oh yeah, I’m bored in lockdown as well. I get that,'” he says. “We thought it was gonna fizzle in a few weeks or months but that wasn’t the case. I learned that the more specific you get, the more universal you get as well. That specificity, I think it’s a thing that a lot of people responded to.”
While Host was initially released in a world where movie theaters were almost universally shuttered, Savage says the experience of watching fans share reaction videos to the film online gave him the sense of community that he initially thought he could only get through the shared experience of watching something on the big screen, surrounded by a large group of people. “People were sending reaction videos and all this lovely stuff,” he says. “It almost replicated that experience that you love as a filmmaker of sitting with an audience and feeling their reaction, watching their faces getting a bit scared, watching their shoulders jump. There was this kind of community that was created around Host, which was really lovely. It wasn’t quite the same [as the theatrical experience], but it almost managed to re-create it.”
Host eventually was screened in theaters around the world, most notably in the UK, where it played at the Prince Charles Cinema accompanied by a series of Q&As with the cast and crew. For Savage, seeing his film on the big screen with an audience for the first time was a milestone. “That was when it kind of started to feel more real,” he reveals. “The first time we got to see it in the cinema here, people were screaming, jumping and grunting. That experience together was kind of bittersweet looking back at it now because we went back into lockdown right afterwards, but it felt at that time that we just collectively got through something and we got to be in that room together. We got to experience these things together. It was a really special moment.” However, Savage hopes that the film can transcend the specificity of its nature and that audiences will be able to take it at face value decades from now. “I hope that 20 years from now, when we’ve hopefully gotten through the pandemic, it can just be a beer and pizza movie.”
While Host was one of the very first feature films to be filmed entirely through Zoom, that specific screen format of making a movie looks like it takes place on a computer – referred to as ‘screenlife movies’ – has been done before, most notably by films such as Unfriended and Searching, both of which have amassed loyal followings and ended up spawning sequels. Savage is a fan of both films but he admits that was aiming for something a bit more different with Host. “Those movies are very scripted,” he points out. “They very much follow a kind of traditional Hollywood structure, which isn’t at all a bad thing, but I wanted Host to feel a bit more raw, a bit more authentic.” Asked if he’d ever revisit the screenlife genre in the future, he responds with the affirmative. “There’s a real freedom to it,” he says. “It really just puts the focus on character and storytelling. I think every filmmaker should try and do it at some point because it really just helps you prioritize what’s really important to your character and your story.”
As for the near future, Savage has several projects in the works, including a movie produced by Sam Raimi, which was in the works prior to Host (“I really learned a lot from him that I was able to put into Host,” he says) and three films that will be developed and produced with Blumhouse, the first of which brings the Host crew back together again. “It should be out really soon,” reveals Savage. “It’s another movie that touches on what’s going on in the world right now. Not in a direct way, but it is set against a backdrop of a world that is re-opening.” Until then, Savage is processing the impact and reception Host has had so far on the eve of its one-year anniversary. “It makes my head spin a little bit,” he says. “But I think if people completely forget about this movie in a year or two, I’ll be completely fine. What was so amazing about making Host was the creative process. If nobody had seen the movie, it still would have been worth it.”
Host is now streaming on Shudder.