No./9 How we made a horror film on Zoom

WHEN THE CORONAVIRUS lockdown first hit worldwide, and Zoom became the videoconferencing app of choice, the question was soon on everyone’s lips: when is someone going to make a movie on this thing? “A couple of months in, nobody had done it,” recalls director Rob Savage. “So, we were like, ‘Fuck it, we might as well do it!’”

“Might as, an achingly timely chiller about a séance-gone-wrong, set entirely within the confines of Zoom — which has become an instant word-of-mouth hit in the horror community (“the scariest film of the past decade”, declared one blog) and beyond (Elijah Wood is a fan). But this lofty achievement started with a simple prank. “It all just came out of quarantine boredom, really,” Savage recalls. “I was hearing these creepy noises from the attic. So I rallied all my friends on Zoom for emotional support, and spliced in a clip from one of my favourite movies, , where a zombie child jumps out. For a moment everyone thought that I’d had my face eaten off. And reacted as such.”