Studio: Shudder
Director: Brandon Christensen
Writer: Brandon Christensen
Producer: Kurtis David Harder, Brandon Christensen, Osric Chau
Stars: Sara Canning, Osric Chau, Gracie Gillam, Barbara Crampton
Review Score:
Summary:
Travel vloggers suspect the host of their latest vacation rental may actually be a murderous stalker.
Review:
My eyes widened and my lips parted in disbelief when I saw an email in my inbox whose subject line read, “Superhost Checks in to Shudder.” For a split second, my mind wondered, “Nah, could it really be THE Superhost?!”
Superhost was a Saturday afternoon staple in Cleveland, Ohio from 1969 to 1989. Dressed “like a clown version of Superman” as Wikipedia puts it, WUAB’s Marty Sullivan created this kooky persona for cheesy skits and wraparound segments that accompanied old sci-fi/horror films and Three Stooges shorts. Without Superhost, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. His show introduced me to Godzilla as well as the classic Universal Monsters. Superhost became a huge influence on my childhood, and my love of B-movies wouldn’t be the same without him.
The rational part of my brain quickly kicked in after that split second expired. Of course no one was making a movie about a local TV broadcaster who wore long underwear and boxing shorts to read church fish fry flyers during commercial breaks for “Tarantula.” A boy at heart can still dream, can’t he?
A different sort of excitement formed when I saw “Superhost” was actually the third feature from writer/director Brandon Christensen. Christensen may not be a major player in top-tier horror yet, but he belongs to the same unofficial Canadian filmmaking collective that includes Colin Minihan of “Grave Encounters” (review here) and “Urban Legend” remake fame. With his own directing efforts “Still/Born” (review here) and “Z” (review here), Christensen carved out a nice corner for himself in the mid-level thriller space. His movies thus far aren’t designed to be big breakout hits. They’re better classified as reliable little creepers that “get the job done” for lack of more elegant phrasing.
“Superhost” stays in step with Christensen’s reasonably achievable formula for crafting a low-key fright flick: contained single locations (usually heavy on controllable interiors), a small cast, quality camera, standard lighting package, and a crew that knows what they’re doing. As with his prior projects, “Superhost” qualifies as a tight production, but it’s one that doesn’t feel dirt-cheap.
Teddy and Claire are small-time internet personalities who record vacations at various Airbnbs, rate their stay, then post videos documenting the entire affair. Naturally, their videos start with the standard “What’s up guys!” greeting and get goofier from there. I have never watched any rental property reviews on YouTube, and have no idea why anyone would subscribe to a channel that exclusively creates this content, so I can only assume such videos are this obnoxiously edited with flashing graphics and force-fed fakeness in real life.
What’s harder to excuse as only emulating reality is the awkward chemistry between the couple. Actors Sara Canning and Osric Chau do just fine on an individual basis. They probably also appeared right for their separate parts when they read for the roles (unless the jobs were handed to them). Together, they’re another story. It turns out Teddy and Claire’s relationship is in a rough patch for more than one reason, although it’s almost impossible to picture that they were ever involved in a real romance since they come off as purely platonic cousins.
Teddy and Claire run into trouble when they meet Rebecca, the homeowner hosting their latest getaway. At first, she seems oddly quirky in a harmlessly likable way. After a few bumps in the night, strange shadows in the distance, and other signs that things aren’t what they seem, Teddy and Claire start suspecting there may be more malice behind Rebecca’s mysterious motives than they previously thought.
As with Teddy and Claire, it takes an audience’s willingness to meet Rebecca halfway to buy into the performance. Gracie Gillam chooses to salt Rebecca like an Easter ham, scrunching her nose and animating herself like she’s about to join up with Wakko, Yakko, and Dot. This makes her take on the erratic-to-evil stalker stereotype more “What About Bob?” than “Single White Female.” Eventually we come to see that Christensen and Gillam want “Superhost” to flash a funny side here and there, even though the overall film is not really comedic horror.
Genre icon Barbara Crampton adds a dose of name recognition to help the movie get noticed. She plays Vera, a disgruntled host from a previous property who blames Teddy and Claire’s negative review for ruining her rental business. In addition to engaging in a contentious confrontation, Vera warns Rebecca that Teddy and Claire aren’t the people they present themselves to be. This got my hopes up that “Superhost” might have a surprise switcheroo in store. That’s not the case though. Despite Vera looking like a possible monkey wrench in the main triad’s hero/villain dynamic, “Superhost” continues rolling full steam ahead on the plain plot that Rebecca is straight-up psycho and Teddy and Claire are in danger.
“Superhost” comes with an inviting runtime of only 80 minutes, although that’s still 10 too many. Usually when films have fat, it can be found in the extraneous exposition of act one. Weirdly, “Superhost” could cut its excess from act three. From the time Teddy and Claire definitively discover what’s really going on to the time they engage in a final showdown, there’s a long lull of hide and seek that features a lot of hide, but not that much seek. Since nothing substantial happens during this sequence, suspense deflates at a time when tension should be bursting with intensity.
That’s a hiccup straightforward setups often encounter. They tend to run short on ideas for unique things to do.
On the flipside, being an uncomplicated “get in, get out” thriller is “Superhost’s” style from the start. There isn’t a twist so much as a curveball during the climax, and that’s good enough for two unexpected shocks involving a knife that’ll cause faint hearts to squirm. There may not be all that much to it, but the simple approach works well enough for the movie this is: a snack-size serving of stalker horror that slots smoothly into Shudder’s grab-and-go menu of casual chills.
Review Score: 55
If you want to see impossible amounts of blood explode crimson colors like the world’s worst version of a gender reveal, well, “Abigail” at least has that.