REVIEW: “Hokum”
Courtesy of Neon
One of the biggest mistakes modern horror movies make is confusing startling audiences with truly scaring them. Jump scares absolutely have their place, and when they’re used well, they can still send a whole theater into a nervous burst of laughter. But the horror films that last are not remembered because they made people flinch. They’re remembered for creating an atmosphere that drew audiences in and stayed with them long after the movie ended. They understood that real fear lives in the quiet darkness and the unsettling feeling that something is lurking just out of sight. This is why Hokum stands out as a solid reminder that horror is at its best when it slows down, trusts the mood, and lets dread slowly settle in.
Following the excellent Oddity, director Damian McCarthy proves yet again that he is a master of the slow burn. He isn’t trying to reinvent the haunted hotel story here, but he directs it with an impressive degree of confidence and craftsmanship. It has all the familiar ingredients of a classic ghost story that audiences love: a remote location, a spooky local legend, and a man struggling to face his traumatic past. In McCarthy’s hands, those pieces feel fresh, alive, and full of eerie promise. The man in question is Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott), a successful horror novelist who travels to a remote Irish hotel to scatter his parents’ ashes. From the moment he arrives, the place feels wrong, and the locals and hotel employees speak freely of its dark history, one involving an ancient witch said to be trapped inside the hotel’s boarded-up honeymoon suite. It isn’t long before strange things start happening, forcing Ohm to face both the ghosts haunting the establishment and the grief and guilt he’s spent years trying to keep buried.
One of the movie’s smartest choices is making Ohm kind of a jerk. In plenty of horror movies, the main character is meant to be an audience surrogate: likable, relatable, and easy to root for. Ohm is not that kind of character. He is abrasive and arrogant, pushing people away. Yet, Scott makes him compelling from the very beginning. He gives Ohm a sharp bitterness and dry sarcasm that’s clearly a defense mechanism. It makes the character feel more than just angry or unpleasant; it makes him feel wounded and understandably human. It is easily one of the strongest performances of Scott’s career. The supporting cast is just as great, especially David Wilmot as Jerry. A local eccentric who brings a fun mix of humor and sadness to the movie. Instead of being just a one-note side character, Jerry keeps the story unpredictable, helping the movie shift effortlessly between creepy dread and odd moments of real comedy.
McCarthy also has a strong understanding of space. Every hallway, staircase, and basement corner feels carefully designed to make the audience uneasy. He keeps finding inventive ways to frame scenes, so viewers are constantly scanning the edges of the screen, waiting for something to possibly appear. Even better, he resists the urge to explain too much. Many modern horror movies get weighed down by exposition, pausing to explain exactly how the curse works, where the monster or ghost came from, and what rules must be followed to survive. Hokum is a stronger movie because it avoids those exposition dumps. It doles out just enough information for audiences to understand the danger but leaves enough mystery to keep the fear alive.
That said, Hokum isn’t without its flaws. There are a few times where the plot leans on familiar haunted-house cliches, a couple of the twists are easy to see coming, and the ending feels slightly overstuffed as several plot threads collide all at once. Still, these are minor issues, and they do not take away from a movie clearly made by a filmmaker with real affection for the genre and these kinds of stories that help it endure. That affection gives Hokum its personality and helps make the movie far more memorable than a standard ghost story.
By the time the credits roll, Hokum may not be the scariest movie of the year, but it is likely to be one of the more memorable ones. It is eerie, thoughtful, sad, and carefully made, with images and ideas that linger long after it ends. After Caveat, Oddity, and now Hokum, Damian McCarthy once again proves he is a horror director worth following. For horror fans, Hokum is an absolute recommendation. For everyone else, it may be the rare ghost story that’s just eerie and entertaining enough to pull in viewers who usually keep their distance from things that go bump in the night.
Hokum is currently playing in limited release and available to rent on VOD.