“I wasn’t a massive horror fan before shooting Host,” she says, “because I get scared very easily, and just watching it, it’s still scary to me.” She certainly isn’t alone: earlier this year Host made our list of ‘Ten Essential Shudder Originals & Exclusives’ because of how terrifying it is, and it’s one of only a handful of genre movies to have been given a stunning Blu-ray release by Second Sight. One year on from the film’s release, Haley remains “very proud” of the work done on Host. She’s taken some time out of her busy filming schedule to speak to us over the phone, and is only too happy to spill all her insider info about Host. When Haley speaks to STARBURST in early June, it thankfully isn’t over Zoom.

But things quickly go awry when the spirit the group invites into their meeting turns out to be malignant, and starts picking off the group one by one… Released on Shudder last summer, Rob Savage’s Host tells the story of a group of friends (led by Haley, with all actors playing fictionalised versions of themselves) stuck in lockdown who hold a séance over Zoom instead of their usual quizzes. If you’d told Haley Bishop at the beginning of 2020 that there’d be a global pandemic which would shut down nearly the entire world, that she’d end up making a movie entirely over a computer with some of her best friends, and that that movie would go onto be one of the most critically lauded of the year, she’d probably have laughed in your face. To mark the film’s one-year anniversary, STARBURST caught up with the lead actor of 2020’s most revolutionary horror film…

Horror movie zoom call