Written by Rob Savage, Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd; directed by Rob Savage

Available to watch now on Shudder (a Shudder Original).

‘Someone new has joined the meeting…’ 

Genre films have always been excellent at capturing the mood of a time, or rather presenting a reflection of the times. From the paranoia of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, to the vacuous consumerism of Dawn of the Dead, to the more topical Get Out and US… It comes as no surprise then that now we have a horror film that not only feeds on the very recent anxiety of lockdown and the Coronavirus, but also gives us a treatise on 2020 so far. The fact that it came so quickly and is so damned good is the real revelation, simultaneously paying homage to the classics yet retaining its own sense of self.

As many of us have been doing during this time, a bunch of friends arrange to have a Zoom call to keep in touch. The difference on this occasion? One of the friends, Haley (Haley Bishop) has brought in Seylan (Seylan Baxter) to perform a séance. It all starts off harmless enough, but when some of the friends – in particular Teddy (Edward Linard) and Jemma (Jemma Moore) – don’t take it anywhere near seriously enough, things start to spiral out of control.

You see, the spirits hate it when you do that and one in particular has decided to teach them a lesson that night. Cue lots of strange lights, objects moving by themselves, barely glimpsed movement in dark corridors or rooms, and one especially fraught trip into an attic. Every ounce of tension is squeezed out of the premise, the suspense at times quite hard to bear – as it is in all the best horror flicks. How does it all pan out? You’re just going to have to watch and see.

One of the clever things about this hour-long film – which has hardly any fat on it whatsoever – is that it takes something that’s freely available and we’ve all been relying on, something that definitely lends itself to cheap filmmaking, then turns it around on us. It’s both familiar and unsettling, owing huge debts to the likes of Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity and Unfriended of course, whilst at the same time creating its own mythology and scares – sold to us by a cast that give outstanding performances and are totally believable. One scene especially uses harmless and fairly new phone technology to create incredibly effective chills. If you’re a horror fan, it’s also huge amounts of fun: you’ll jump; you’ll check over your own shoulder; you’ll not want to go into a dark kitchen after watching. But it’s films like this that give you some degree of control over the frights, in a time when control over our lives seems impossible. Top marks all round, miss this one at your peril!

Verdict: ‘Spirits, we invite you to use us…’   10/10                                                 

Paul Kane