If you’re anything like me, when you are working your butt off non-stop, you wish for a duvet day. A time where you can just hide away in bed and watch as many movies as possible without feeling any guilt, as you are too sick to do anything else. Well, this was a case of Monkey Paw-esque ‘be careful what you wish for’, as I recently had COVID and let me tell you, there were days where I could barely open my eyes let alone watch movies. But as I started to feel remotely better, I turned on Shudder to see what was afoot. I recalled the Final Guys podcast had spoken about Superhost, so I popped it on.

Ho. Lee. Cow.

What a fun movie.

First off, I was excited to see Osric Chau, as I am huge Supernatural fan, and Gracie Gillman from Teen Beach Movie, also being a massive Disney nerd. Add in the iconic and superb Barbara Crampton and I was already hyped.

One of the things I dug from the outset is the fact we know the super host Rebecca is going to be the villain, just look at the poster and the tag line – 'Don’t Forget to Like and Survive', and the opening line in the trailer, ‘There’s Something Wrong with Rebecca.’

I have no issues with going straight in knowing who is who, there is still plenty of character development, and you learn more about Rebecca as the movie goes on.

In a nutshell, Superhost follows a couple of travel vloggers, Teddy and Claire, as they stay in a dream vacation rental property and vlog their experience. Hits and subs have been decreasing, so they are hoping to get some great footage to spice things up again and get those likes and shares rising. Things that would normally cause alarm – keypads not working, an over-friendly host, cameras everywhere – concern Teddy, but Claire is so obsessed with building their channel, she is excited by the opportunity to film potential ‘viral footage’. She is also massively resentful that they’ve had to borrow money from Teddy’s parents. And from there, chaos ensues…

Whilst we already know from the poster and trailer, the super host herself, Rebecca, is going to be, let’s say, interesting, it doesn’t spoil the tension that builds up nicely and the added bonus of scenes with Barbara Crampton. There isn’t enough of her, but that is a personal pet peeve because she’s awesome. Her character is great and her last scene with Rebecca is fabulous. 

Whilst I didn’t find it particularly scary, it doesn’t mean it isn’t a good movie, just more fun than spooky. There are some genuinely creepy moments and of course Gracie’s performance amped it up to 11. I’d love to know who she was channeling, Annie Wilkes or Norman Bates maybe, maybe even Jack Torrance at times.

Superhost is yet another movie that was shot during the pandemic, so a lot of the already minuscule budget was spent adhering to COVID protocol, but it doesn’t show. It’s a great story with relevant characters and most of all, Gracie’s maniacal grin should go into the history books of horror icons.