No Spoilers
A couple of days ago I was perusing my video options on Amazon Prime and Shudder and passed by a movie I’ve been passing over for about month. I pay for YouTube Premium, Shudder, Amazon Prime and Netflix and of course with my additional free options of Peacock, TubiTV and PlutoTV I’m sometimes spoiled as far as movies I can choose from. Well spoiled is the wrong word. With so many options to choose from it’s just frickin hard to pick a movie to watch sometimes.
But I found a couple of good ones which I thoroughly enjoyed which I’d like to tell you about.
Let’s go with the one I kept passing over, Host, which I watched on my Shudder subscription. I sometimes have the bad habit of choosing movies based on the cover picture. Now with more options than ever I tend to read the short synopsis that comes with each movie to try and help me decide what to pick. So when I read the synopsis on Host, I was none too impressed. A bunch of girls get on a Zoom video call to have an online séance and creepy things start to happen… Yeah that was enough to give it a month of passes. When I did finally decide to sit down and watch it, I was pleasantly surprised. It’s one of those new internet chat window kind of horrors (my first actually). Being a huge fan of found footage horror I tend to get interested in movies of the genre so I grabbed my bag of white cheese popcorn, hopped in bed and started the movie. It started off innocuous enough with the hubbub of girls starting to join an online group session one at a time. After a bunch of greetings and par for the course internet humor and trolling, the host of the session comes on and the séance starts. The host gets the girls in the mood by asking each of them to light a candle and make a mental picture of themselves tied with a rope to ‘reality’. Just in case something goes wrong. If something does go wrong the theory was they could mentally cut the rope, i.e. blow out the candle and pop back into the safety of this reality. Nothing new or exciting there. But the thrills start pretty quickly after that. After one of the girls faked a presence in the room, things started slowly going downhill. I don’t want to spoil the movie so I’m going to stop there. For a movie that’s only 55 minutes long it’s a thrill ride. Towards the end I was even covering my face trying to avert a jump scare. Hey I was in bed and the lights were out. Lol. If you were a fan of the original Blair Witch Project with the way the psychological tension was built up you’ll surely enjoy Host.
Now for the second movie. This time I chose a Japanese horror with English subtitles called, Noroi: The Curse. It’s a creepy little found footage film which delves in to some sorcery cult and what a village of superstitious believers did to keep an evil at bay. Many things about this movie impressed me. The length, the detail, the character development, the plot and maybe even a little twist action. And right when you think it’s all over and credits start to roll, only then is story completed with an additional 15+ minutes of runtime. Plus it’s a feature length film
If you love good horror and are a fan of found footage these are both excellent choices. I highly recommend Noroi: The Curse if you’ve never watched Japanese horror. I’m going to throw in a another movie I saw about a month ago which I think is a Japanese movie made by a Western studio, but not sure. The Temple is another good choice after you’ve finished watching Host and Noroi: The Curse.
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