Set in April of 2020, the movie is a slasher where the chief sin isn’t drugs or sex. It’s not taking Covid-19 seriously.
I watched it. It went straight to Paramount+ after the festival circuit.
I think in the horror thread I mentioned how odd it is that we’ve had a lot of horror movies set during the pandemic, but not actually about the pandemic or using the pandemic in ways that were vital to the scripts. Host really wasn’t about Covid. It just used Covid lockdown as an excuse to use the Zoom POV, but it really could’ve been set in any year with video streaming chat like Unfriended.
Here, I got my monkey’s paw wish. Covid is essential to the script, at least once you learn what’s going on. For most of the run time though, this is just Scream without the clever meta-humor and a lower body count.
Spoiler:
The killers being the family of someone that died of Covid-19 due to the protagonist being a super-spreader is some choice. I’m not even sure what to make of that. In many slashers, the victims are killed for sins that represent the rebelliousness of youth, (sex, underage drinking, smoking the weed) but they’re usually pretty innocent otherwise. This is more like the revenge setup in Pumpkinhead or Prom Night. The protagonist has actually done something that killed someone else, we just don’t know that until the movie gets near the end.
Still, Jane Adams is a treat when she shows up.