Covid-19 will undoubtedly have an impact on storytelling in the future. But those changes may be micro rather than macro. “2020 is going to be this big speed bump in culture, like 9/11 or a war, where even if your movie isn’t directly about it, you have to acknowledge that it happened within the universe of your story,” screenwriter and author John August (Aladdin, Charlie’s Angels) told me earlier this year. “Take Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story. Slide that movie two years forward, and that couple would have made it through Covid-19 in New York. It would feel weird to not acknowledge that family had gone through that challenge together.” The problem facing storytellers wanting to make movies about the pandemic is what he describes as “the fish-in-an-aquarium problem: it’s hard to see the water.” Right now, we’re so immersed in Covid-19 as a culture that telling truly gripping or interesting stories about it is tricky to do.
Which perhaps explains the success of Host. “It’s not a great pandemic film – it’s a great film whose story coincides with the pandemic,” says Engler. “It works because it deals with the frustration of trying to deal with Zoom calls… with a horror element added in,” adds Cargill. “That’s what works about it, not the fact that it takes place within the pandemic.” Instead of telling the story of the coronavirus crisis, it zeroes in on one relatable fact of it. “Successful pandemic movies will let viewers identify fine details of what daily life is like right now: not getting the brands of food we like in grocery deliveries, small things like that. It’s that which will connect with audiences.”
The most successful films dealing with the pandemic may not be obviously pandemic-themed at all. Stories set during the Covid-19 crisis are in-demand at studios right now, but how many of them will make it to the screen is debatable: the length of time it takes to make most movies, coupled with the unpredictable nature of a pandemic, makes it difficult for movie execs to know what sort of market they’re going to be arriving in. Tonally and narratively, assumptions a fiction film makes about the virus could be totally out of date by the time a movie’s ready to be released. Instead, it’s likely we’ll see a lot of pandemic movies that aren’t pandemic-related on the surface, but use different guises to explore the feelings and societal issues Covid-19 has foregrounded: subjects like isolation, separation, governmental incompetence and humility in the face of nature.
Savage is curious about what comes next. “I’m glad Host has been cathartic for some people, and I’m sure other great filmmakers are readying other projects that they hope will be cathartic, too,” he says. “You make films to reflect the world around you. What we’re going through already feels pretty cinematic: we’re living in a dystopian movie. I’m intrigued by how setting things in this New Normal will make old ideas feel fresh.” Covid-19 has changed almost everything about our existences in 2020. You can expect it to change the sort of storytelling we see on screens in 2021, too.
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