Your Host (2025) FRIGHTFEST Review
Your Host (2025) FRIGHTFEST Review
Oscar nominee Jackie Earle Haley, star of WATCHMEN, SHUTTER ISLAND and the A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET remake, returns to the horror genre as the sadistic serial killer Barry Miller in director DW Medoff’s SAW meets ‘The Price is Right’ shocker. Four friends get trapped in Miller’s macabre game show, forced to outwit his twisted mind while racing against time.
Every move brings them closer to freedom or their final, gruesome fate. Going beyond genre expectations, YOUR HOST delves into how trust can be manipulated unexpectedly and unsettlingly, elevating tension and terror to a new and heightened level. Plot Synopsis Taken from https://frightfest.co.uk/2025London/
YOUR HOST has significant echoes of both the SAW franchise and Vincent Price’s DR PHIBES. It also has a terrific lead in Jackie Earle Haley as the sadistic game show ‘host’ of the film’s title. His performance is pitch perfect, had he gone too far any other way it would have ruined the effect. There is also bountiful and expertly executed gore – check out that ‘splitting head’ – and the film’s colourful visual aesthetics make up for its limited locations. Its only real failing being it did not know when it calls it day, limping towards its finale rather than whizzing along at the zippy pace of before.
I am still not sure why all four of the captured youngsters were being punished/killed for the wrongdoings of just one of their number, but the story and concept is still more plausible and therefore more effective than say Jigsaw, in the SAW franchise. Exactly how did Jigsaw produce such elaborate gadgets, contraptions, and sets? Gadgets, contraptions and sets that would involve a huge financial cost and raise curious questions from those paid to ensemble and then test the items such as ‘you want this made for what again exactly?’ all the while being in the worst of health with cancer. Jigsaw must have aced Technical Drawing as a subject at school and have bountiful cash at his disposal.
Here our ‘Host’ has contraptions and torture devices that are more within the realms of feasibility and therefore believability. It feels more grounded. This is yet another winner at this year’s FRIGHTFEST that did not promise to be much from the premise but ended up being an edge-of-the-seat gorefest that delivers crowd-pleasing thrills in abundance.
YOUR HOST received its World Premiere at FrightFest 2025 on 22nd August
