Then at 4:24am, I texted Rob two immortal words, “Zoom Seance”, and the rest is history. The only problem was we had no idea how we were gonna do it. Rob called me to explain that for some mad reason, Shudder were trusting us to turn the 2-minute prank video into a feature film. (H) Where exactly did the idea to have the film centred around a seance gone wrong come from? Is it something that anyone involved in the project had had experience with? After that we hooked up with Shudder to make a longer version!

We put it online and it blew up, getting 7million views in just a few days. We recorded it on Zoom and it showed the reactions of all of our friends. Director Rob Savage pulled a prank on everyone which involved him being freaked by a zombie kid in his attic and pretending to die. Up until then, our WhatsApp group, ‘ QUARANTINE MOVIE CLUB’ – made up of actors and crew who are all mates – was just watching movies every day. (Jed Shepherd) No, we came up with it, made it and released it during 12 weeks in lockdown. (Horrified) Was the film an idea you’d had before COVID-19 wrote off the entirety of 2020, or was it something that materialised as a result of lockdown? Personally, I am a huge fan, and so was delighted to get the chance to ask Jed Shepherd, one of the fantastic minds behind the film, all about it. The tightly-wound feature delivered some big scares and a real sense of unease wrapped itself around the entire viewing experience. HOST has been the talk of the town since it dropped, and for good reason. The film centres itself on a Zoom seance that inevitably goes wrong, and, as very quickly became clear, it was just the kind of thing we needed to keep going throughout these trying times. Set your minds back to the start of August when Shudder released HOST – a lockdown-inspired horror that kicked up quite a storm.

F or all of the turmoil the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has been responsible for, there has been one silver lining for horror fans.

Host film shudder