“Everyone’s got good in them. But, everyone’s got bad in them, too.” – The Host
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Four insufferable twenty-somethings travel to a cabin in the woods to party and have fun for the weekend. Just kidding, there’s no undead hockey player scoring goals on them with a machete, but there is definitely a group of annoying people traveling to a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Director DW Medoff and screenwriter Joey Miller’s Your Host is a bit more complex than Friday the 13th and its many clones. It may begin with a few noises in the woods, but our gang of anti-social miscreants quickly ends up in a different horror movie altogether.
James (Jamie Flatters) is from a wealthy family and is taking his three friends, Matthew (David Angland), Melissa (Joelle Rae), and Anita (Ella-Rae Smith) with him to his deceased rich uncle’s cabin for a weekend of partying. Their jolly soiree gets cut abruptly short when someone shows up to relieve them of their consciousness and kidnap them in the middle of the night.
“Four insufferable twenty-somethings travel to a cabin in the woods, then somehow end up in a deranged psycho game show.”
“Do you want to play a game?” When the four amigos wake, they find themselves shackled with neck braces and heavy chains inside some sort of industrial building. And none of them know how they got there. Sound familiar? While there are no puppets on tricycles handing out tasks, and no man in a robe complaining about his late mortgage payments, there actually is a game to be played. The forgetful four are eventually greeted by The Host (Jackie Earle Haley), a gruesome but silly game show host dressed in a suit of loud colors and a theme of infinite jest. He wears a half-mask in a similar fashion to The Phantom of the Opera. But the phantom of this opera has a lot more to hold a grudge over than his face.
The motley foursome soon learn that they have been recruited as the next contestants on a horrifying game show with no living audience members. They’re run through a gamut of sadistic challenges that they always end up on the wrong side of. The deadliest part of the game is when they are told that they all must confess to the worst thing they’ve ever done. If any one of them lies, all four will die. If none of them lie, he allows three of them to live. I’m sure you can guess how that turns out. It’s made even worse when we discover that the host has a personal connection with one of the four.
Jackie Earle Haley’s brilliant acting holds this entire piece together and makes it all work well. Sometimes the character reminds me of Bill Mosley’s performance in House of 1000 Corpses trilogy. All of the actors perform well, but Haley is the engine running this show.
"…Haley's brilliant acting holds this entire piece..."
