Premiering at Frightfest 2025 on August 22nd, Your Host is the latest film from Director D.W. Medoff (Pollen 2023, I Will Never Leave You Alone 2023). Written by Screenwriter Joey Miller, in his first produced credit, Medoff was drawn to the script due to its themes of duplicity, complicity, and brutality, with the intention of blurring the lines between who is a victim and who is a perpetrator.
The film follows Anita (Ella-Rae Smith: The Commuter 2018, Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw 2019), James (Jamie Flatters: Avatar: The Way of Water 2022, The School for Good and Evil 2022), Matthew (David Angland: Birdwatching 2019) and Melissa (Joelle Ray: My Dad’s Christmas Date 2020, Christmas in Notting Hill 2023), four friends who decide to go and celebrate a birthday at James’ luxury cabin in the woods.
While drinking and partying, they hear a noise from outside. When James and Anita go to investigate, they discover an old VHS camcorder recording them from the edge of the woods. Assuming it is a prank of some kind or the remnants of another guest’s stay, they shrug it off and continue their partying. However, the party is cut short when a figure dressed all in black breaks in and drugs them one by one.
When the four friends come to, they discover that each of them is chained and bound in an abandoned factory that resembles the set of a game show. Along with the game show set is a game show host (Jackie Earle Hayley: Shutter Island 2010, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010) who begins to play a terrifying and deranged game with them – if they win, he will hurt them, and if they lose? He will hurt them even more.
Your Host joins a long line of splatter or ‘Torture Porn’ films, a sub-genre which trended in the early noughties and is often synonymous with the Saw franchise. In many ways, Your Host is an homage to Saw, or perhaps a rip-off, depending on your generosity with such matters. The film sees the increasingly gory and graphic torture of the characters, which is, like Saw, dished out to those who one person has deemed deserving of it.
However, whilst Saw’s antagonist inflicts his games and devices on random members of society in his style of vigilante justice, Your Host’s antagonist has revenge in mind for a very specific crime. It is in this element of the film that the filmmakers’ intentions become dubious.
Your Host may have honorable intentions with a plot that proposes to ask the audience about victims, perpetrators, and their own complicity in such matters. However, considering the importance and severity of these topics, a Horror film such as this does not feel like the appropriate format to explore them.
Instead, this comes across as an attempt to subvert the #MeToo movement, which is not only tone deaf but also morally questionable. It is more worrying than that is the suggestion that women should think extremely carefully before reporting actions that might make them feel uncomfortable, they should consider strongly if they are overreacting or not, and if they do misunderstand an interaction, then they should be tortured and maybe even killed. Taking into consideration the statistics surrounding assault and the number of perpetrators who will ever see any justice, Your Host is a film that audience members should consider very carefully before watching.
The production design is strong, especially considering the film’s lower budget, and fans of Jackie Earle Jones might get a kick out of seeing him return to Horror. Still, overall, this is not a film that anyone of good conscience can recommend. That is why Cryptic Rock gives Your Host 1 out of 5 stars.
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