The “horror movie over online conference call” has been around for more than half a decade, since 2014’s Unfriended. Sure, we’ve seen pretty much all of this before. Not once did director Rob Savage ( Dawn of the Deaf) actually set foot in any of the actors’ homes due to social distancing protocols, and we have to say that considering all those limitations, what they’ve produced actually looks surprisingly competent.

This film was truly shoe-strung together by its cast and crew, being filmed entirely by the actors themselves in their own homes. Shudder’s new original film just hit the horror streamer this week, and packs a trailer that is both knowingly derivative but fun in its own especially “DIY” sort of way. Of which I can only assume Host will be a prime example. That means all of the Zoom commercials, the Zoom sketches on SNL, and yes, the Zoom horror movies.

When we’re looking back on the age of the coronavirus pandemic a few years from now-hopefully that will actually come to pass-then we’ll surely at some point have to collect all of this era’s “Zoom parody” pieces into a single tome for assessment of how they reflected our anxieties of living through the pandemic.

Shudder zoom movie