Yes, 6 out of 10. It's a short, jumpy séance over a video call, and the scares keep coming for most of its fifty-seven minutes.
🐱THE SCARE SIGNAL
SCARE SCORE
6 /10
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
DREAD LEVEL
Medium
You will look at your laptop camera with suspicion for a night or two.
DOG
Dog: fine
fine, no dog dies.
Ruling: It is a fifty-seven minute séance on a video call with steady jump scares, so keep the lights on.
Host runs fifty-seven minutes and takes place entirely on a group video call. Six friends in lockdown arrange a séance with a medium, and one of them treats it as a joke. The medium's connection is not great, and that matters.
The premise, briefly
Six friends stuck in lockdown hold a séance over a video call, and one of them fakes a ghost story that something in the call decides to believe.
How much do you want to know?
🐱
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
🐱CUT TO THE CHASE
How it ends
Radina, Jinny, Teddy and Emma all die, and Caroline's call cuts out as she is attacked. Jemma and Haley are still alive when the film stops, trying to leave Haley's house by camera flash as the demon rushes at them.
The scene you're dreading
Early on, right after Haley's chair slides across the room, Caroline goes up to her attic to check a noise and the legs of a hanging corpse come into view.
The dog
No dog dies in Host, and no animal does either.
Host delivers its jump scares through video call windows, and the demon works through the group one person at a time.
THE SHORT VERSION IS HIDDEN
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
The medium's wifi is the first warning
It is July 2020, during lockdown in London. Haley, Jemma, Radina, Emma, Caroline and Teddy join their usual weekly video call, and Haley has booked a medium named Seylan to lead a séance. Seylan warns them not to disrespect the spirits, and only Haley and Caroline take that seriously. Teddy's girlfriend Jinny disconnects him from the call. Jemma says she can feel tension around her neck and starts to cry, and she describes a friend from school who took his own life, which she says she can sense in the room. Seylan's internet drops out, and Jemma laughs and admits she invented the whole story because she was bored. Haley is furious. While they argue, Haley's chair is yanked across the room. Then comes the scene to brace for, early on: Caroline climbs into her attic to see what is making a noise, and the legs of a hanging corpse come into view. After that, Haley's instant camera shows a similar figure hanging in her living room, and Emma's wine glass shatters on its own.
Haley reconnects with Seylan and describes what is happening. Seylan explains that Jemma's invented dead person may have given a demon a face to wear, which would let it into the living world. She instructs them to end the séance, but the demon interrupts and she drops off the call once more. The girls follow her instructions anyway and close the circle. They relax and start to say goodbye, and Caroline is suddenly thrown into her camera. Emma has left a video filter switched on and turns her camera toward her living room, where the filter fits a mask onto an invisible figure's face, and the figure turns to look at her. She spreads flour on the floor, footprints appear, and she is attacked before she makes it into her bedroom. Behind Radina, Alan's body drops down, and she bolts, but the demon kills her. Caroline's camera comes back on, showing the demon slamming her face onto the keyboard while she pleads for help, and then the feed goes dead.
A music box from Teddy's childhood
Haley is dragged backward through her bedroom door. Jemma lives around the corner and runs over. Teddy rejoins the call to find only Emma there. He has no idea what has happened, so he assumes Emma is pulling a prank on him, until the demon takes the shape of a horrifying humanoid figure and attacks him. He runs out to the garden, where Jinny is hoisted off the ground and her neck breaks. Teddy hides and uses a lighter to see, but the demon lures him with the same eerie music box his brother used to frighten him with as a child. It knocks him down, he drops the lighter, and the fire it starts kills him.
The ending, explained
Emma's bedroom door swings open, and the blanket she throws lands on something human-shaped that she can't see. She tries to get out through her window and falls to her death. Jemma forces her way into Haley's house, where the demon smashes a bottle over her head and starts wrecking the kitchen. Jemma shakes it off and locates Haley crouched beneath her desk, and the two of them try to leave using the flash from Haley's camera to see their way. The demon appears in the last flash and rushes at them just as the call's timer runs out, and the film ends there.
The post-credits ruling
Nobody has confirmed whether there is a scene after the credits.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: fine, no dog dies.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is Host scary?
Yes. Host is a 6 out of 10 with Medium dread. It is a short film with jump scares throughout, and the fear comes from watching a séance go wrong on a video call.
How does Host end?
In Host, Radina, Teddy and Emma are killed, and Jemma and Haley try to escape Haley's house by the flash of her camera. The demon rushes at them as the call's timer expires and the film cuts off.
Does the dog die in Host?
No. No dog dies in Host, and no animal dies in it either.
Is there a post-credits scene in Host?
Nobody has confirmed whether Host has a scene after the credits.
Why does the demon show up in Host?
Jemma makes up a story about a school friend who died, and Seylan explains that the invented person may have let a demon wear that identity like a mask. In Host that gives the demon a way into the living world.
BLURRED FOR YOUR PROTECTION
The whole plot of Host is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
You don't need to sit through fifty-seven minutes of Host to find out who gets off the call. Install Scaredy Cat and the internet's horror gets blurred before you see it.
