Movie: Hosts
Production Year: 2020
Tubi Provided Summary: After a father invites his neighbors over for a holiday meal, they reveal their violent nature as his family members are subjected to their darkness.
Film Can Be Accessed At: https://tubitv.com/movies/582002/hosts?start=true
Does This Movie Pass The Bechdel Test: No
Character Analysis:
- Lucy: Compassionate, child-loving, very feminine
- Jack: Goofy, very casual, adores Lucy
- Michael: Patriarch, very masculine, loves his family deeply
- Cassie: Highly emotional mother, feminine, recently in remission after being diagnosed with cancer seven months prior to the events of the film
- Eric: Son of Michael and Cassie, masculine, little character development
- Lauren: Daughter of Michael and Cassie, masculine, struggling with a boyfriend who wants to move too fast, crumbles under pressure, eventually finds her footing
- Ben: Youngest son of Michael and Cassie, very sweet, loving, clueless because he is young
Death Analysis
- Cassie: First to die, moderate death scene, attacked at the dinner table after revealing her cancer is in remission, head beaten into the table with a hammer until her skull cracks and contents are left in a flattened mess on the table, killed by a possessed Lucy because she was too sick to be a host for the supernatural.
- Eric: Second to die, extended death scene, while Eric is possessed, Michael strangles the supernatural creature out of him but continues until Eric is dead, strangled by Michael.
- Jack: Third to die, quick death scene, shot in the back while possessed and attacking Michael, shot by Lauren.
- Michael: Fourth to die, extended death scene, shot in the chest with a rifle before being stabbed repeatedly beyond recognition, shot and stabbed by Jack and dies seconds after Jack dies.
- Lucy: Fith and last to die, extended death scene, hung by the neck in a tree until the supernatural being is expelled from her body and then clubbed over the head with a branch, killed by Lauren.
Survival Analysis
- Ben: Revealed to be possessed by a supernatural entity, ending ambiguous.
- Lauren: Survives the events of the film but is shown surrounded by the beings, ending is ambiguous.
Final Statistics:
Character Sex Ratio: 3 Females: 4 Males
Character Survivor Ratio: 0 Female: 0 Males (not including ambiguous characters)
Character Death Ratio: 66% of Females to 75% of Males (not including ambiguous characters)
Final Takeaways:
Hosts, while failing the Bechdel Test, offers something unusual in the horror genre: surprisingly progressive storytelling. While most of the characters remain undeveloped, either due to possession or early death, the movie offers a genuinely disturbing story. Characters whether male or female, masculine or feminine, even young or old, are not discriminated against when it comes to on-screen violence.
The plot offers a deeply disturbing story due to the unstoppable supernatural horror, targeted violence, and ambiguous ending. Even the deaths offer horror instead of the common cheesiness that comes with violence in the horror genre. The deaths in the film are particularly interesting in how progressive they are for horror films.
Unlike others of its kind, Hosts kills each character in, particularly gruesome and violent ways. No one character’s death is considerably more bloody or targeted than the other so the movie avoids the consistent problem of glorifying and extending female deaths. In addition, there is a similar death rate for male and female characters which also puts this film ahead of others in the genre.
In the end, Hosts offers a pleasantly unsettling atmosphere that is only accentuated by its continuous gore on screen. The gore is not just there to entertain, but also has a deeper meaning, is targeted at all characters, not just females, and highlights what it means to be masculine or feminine in the film. When analyzing the film through the Sex Role perspective, it is clear that whether masculine or feminine, man or woman, no character in Hosts is safe.
Shared by: Ariana Nichols
Image Credit: IMDb