2020 was just the weirdest year. The pandemic. The quarantine. The regular video chats to soothe our collective traumas and silence our internal screaming. Though it was five years ago now, it remains a fresh hell. The likes of which I hope we need not traverse again. However, the pandemic did give some creatives new ideas on how to tell stories. For instance, Rob Savage’s supernatural film Host, where a group of friends perform a séance over a video call and unleash a malevolent force that begins picking them off one by one. Host was a film that caught many people off guard, being a film of the moment that horror fans embraced for its creative scares and granted catharsis through its relatability of isolation during lockdown. With five years to perfect the lockdown aesthetic that Host captured, I had high hopes for Don’t Log Off.

Getting a limited theatrical release this weekend, Don’t Log Off tells the story of a group of friends meeting over Zoom to throw a birthday party for Samantha (The Girl in the Pool’s Brielle Barbusca). However, over the course of their conversation, it’s discovered that something isn’t right when Sam never returns from collecting the supposed cupcakes that couple Becca (Snatchers’ Ashley Argota) and Jacob (Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons’ Jack Griffo) have sent the birthday girl. Growing increasingly worried, Katy (Supernatural’s Kara Royster) calls Sam’s parents’ house, only to discover that Sam never went home for lockdown. Meanwhile, Brian (47 Meters Down: Uncaged’s Khylin Rhambo) discovers something sinister in the background audio of their recording.

If you couldn’t already tell, the film is stacked with notable names and faces, including some I haven’t yet mentioned, like Modern Family’s Ariel Winter, The Killing’s Sterling Beaumon, Loot’s Nick Lehmann, and How to Eat Fried Worms’ Luke Benward. There’s no shortage of talent in this movie, and chemistry-wise, there’s never a moment where you don’t believe this group could actually be friends. Still, there are some heavy-handed archetypes being pitched through Don’t Log Off’s characters, specifically for the pantsless Adam (Benward), who also seems to serve as the loveable yet provincial pothead of the group, even if he only mentions being stoned in passing.

What happens in Don’t Log Off is an obfuscated blend of online investigation and home invasion horror. Several small clues alert our Zoom detectives to new leads, until a trail to Sam’s last known location begins to form. Then, one by one, each friend masks up and heads out to find the truth about what happened to Sam, which also happens to be where writer-director-brothers Brandon and Garrett Baer fall into a pit of tropey Scooby-Doo split-up nonsense while the others voyeuristically watch as their friends disappear.

There is some saving grace in Don’t Log Off’s subtext. I mean, the idea of people disappearing during COVID is somewhat allegorical to the disease itself. People leave their homes, and they disappear. I knew a few people this literally happened to, and I’m sure others do as well. However, of all the horrors Don’t Log Off could explore, it bends congenially into a lighter surface-level experience that never fully fit its undertones, providing a more saccharin story to Savage’s Host, by not pressing the trauma responses of characters and instead opting for nuanced conversation into the deceptions of misinformation events as some characters think what’s occurring is real while others believe the whole thing is a prank.

While I can appreciate that Don’t Log Off takes a different route from Host, it never gripped or stirred me in the same way. By the time a second person left to check on the first person who had gone to check on Sam, I rolled my eyes. When they called the police for the umpteenth time, a deep sigh emerged. When they implemented the escape room methods to figure out what happened, well, that was actually kind of fun. While it’s COVID referential, it never captures the dread, ire, or frustrations of the time. Sure, characters make a big deal about standing in lines at the grocery store, but that’s a veneer. Tell me the story they don’t want to tell. The one about how they took the hottest shower possible after wiping down all their groceries with disinfectant wipes, sobbing irrationally the entire time, until they sat down to eat an entire loaf of banana bread by themselves and take a nap.

Host, as a supernatural thriller, does a better job of capturing the surrealness of the 2020 pandemic, whereas the more realistic thriller Don’t Log Off never pops in a believable way. This movie was filmed during the pandemic five years ago, and while I tried to put myself back in the 2020 headspace to consider the full aperture of the film’s perspective from when it was filmed and if it had been released back then, I just don’t think it’s fully baked.

Don’t Log Off has its diverting sequences, using slow pans into the action to meticulously achieve tension, crafting moments that lock the viewer into specific scenes. However, as a whole, there’s a lot left unconsidered, and I think timing could have helped change that. If it had been released during or just after lockdown, or if other aspects had been considered, being five years removed, perhaps the outcome would have been different. Don’t Log Off boasts good performances but stumbles with bewildering plot decisions and poor character choices. It occasionally captivates with a time-capsule-like quality, but I’m not sure I’d want to stay logged on next time.