Nostalgia has proven a strong enough tool within the horror genre to revisit seemingly dormant franchises over the last few years (Halloween, Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, to name a few), but what about a particular subsect itself? For those craving the wince-inducing torture porn wave that swept the 2000s (thanks predominantly to titles such as Saw and Hostel), Your Host should hit the spot, with its evident low-budget aesthetic and shameless practical gore effects clearly serving as a love letter of sorts to a style of horror that isn’t as celebrated in the current landscape.
Whilst there isn’t a creepy bicycling puppet asking its possible victims if they “Would like to play a game?”, there is a game of sorts being undertaken, with whichever vicious violent act being filmed for an “audience” that may or may not actually being watching. The puppet master – as it were – is the unnerving, half-masked Barry Miller (Jackie Earle Haley), a failed television host who has taken to punishing a group of 20-somethings for their sins. What those sins are and why they have been specifically targeted all comes to light over the course of the film’s 90 minutes, but writer Joey Miller and director DW Medoff are more interested in the gruesome nature of their punishments, first and foremost.
A mixed bag of victims-in-waiting and potential final girls and boys, Miller’s script sets up a pretty standard quartet in seeming nice girl Anita (Ella-Rae Smith), the more brash Melissa (Joelle Rae), douchey rich kid James (Jamie Flatters), and Matthew (David England), who’s honestly just kind of “there”, who are (loosely) enjoying each other’s company at James’s estate, vaping, drinking, and daring same-sex kisses as if they were a group of giggly teenagers. An argument breaks out, feelings are hurt, James is absolutely not getting laid, and there’s a video camera set up outside the house, which they don’t think too much of, which pretty much secures them a spot on the slab for being utterly stupid.
Once all four are captured and chained together for Barry’s amusement, the film pretty much plays out as each character begs for their life and hope to repent for their perceived wrongdoing, before he dispatches of them in a variety of gruesome manners. There’s not much to it, but Your Host isn’t really pretending to have much substance – aside from a slightly awkward #MeToo narrative inclusion – so if you’re a gorehound that takes pleasure in bloody nastiness, there’s no reason why Medoff’s film won’t scratch a certain itch. The characters are all surface level archetypes and the acting doesn’t overtly impress, but the practicality of its effects are undeniably impressive; if there’s any CGI it’s pretty impossible to detect.
Haley, no stranger to the genre, throws himself wholeheartedly into the deranged mentality of Barry, and it’s his performance, along with the impressive, albeit disgusting nature of the effects, that make Your Host enough of a watch for fans of gore and grimy unsubtlety this Halloween season. It’s not exactly a strong enough case in the argument for the torture porn wave to return, but you have to admire such commitment to the vicious craft as expressed here.
TWO AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Your Host is available for rental and/or purchase on VOD from October 14th, 2025.
