Hokum Review: Adam Scott Deals With Grief in a Haunted Hotel You'll Want to Check Into
Director Damien Mc Carthy crafts a film long on atmosphere, though short on background
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There are a lot of different emotions felt in director Damien Mc Carthy's latest film, Hokum, ranging from terror to sadness to resignation. One shouldn't expect anything less from the director that gave us the equally ambiguous (and equally Irish) Oddity in 2024. Hokum isn't a typical horror movie, although it has plenty of disturbing scares and images.
What it feeds off of is our current sense of melancholy and resignation, the guilt that permeates our days at the things we didn't do or say. The terror that comes from realizing we're living out a very isolating series of events, and that cruelty feels more casual than it's ever been. All of this in a haunted hotel room with more than a nod to Stephen King's 1408.
At its center is a solid performance from Adam Scott, taking his usual charming dickishness and using that as an entry point for a character desperate to push people away. And who must ultimately find a way to deal with the horrors within himself in order to defeat the horrors around him. It's all manner of dark, broody and, at times, epic.
Ohm Bauman (Scott) is a popular writer who decides to spend his Halloween at the Bilberry Woods Hotel in Ireland. He hopes to find inspiration for his latest book, as well as finally scatter his parents' ashes. He's told the property is haunted by a witch, confined to the honeymoon suite, but thinks it's a load of bull until he makes a decision that almost sees him dying. When a female hotel employee goes missing, rather than return home Ohm decides to figure out what happened to her, and if a witch really resides in the hotel.
A folkloric, magical air permeates Hokum from the minute Ohm enters his hotel and sees the creepy owner telling small children a terrifying fairy tale (complete with wood carved little children grimacing). This isn't a feature with a huge budget, and it's probably easy to assume what existed went to pay Scott, but that doesn't matter as Mc Carthy and production designer Til Frohlich fill every inch of frame with knick knacks and bric a brac to create an atmosphere both old-world and stodgy, but utterly haunting. Under cinematographer Colm Hogan's eye a cherub on a clock can look as disturbing as an empty passageway.
The Bilberry is a hotel as set in its way and out of time as the entire movie itself. There's no real sense of when the movie takes place. Ohm has a contemporary laptop but cell phones aren't really utilized, even when the situation calls for them. Similarly, Ohm's relationship to his family remains in a squingy liminal place that defies explanation. He brings a photo of his mother, that looks like it could be anytime between the 1940s-1970s, though it's never really discussed as to why he waited so long to come, and how long everyone in his life has been dead.
Adam Scott has cultivated a string of jerkish characters in his career, but it makes narrative sense within Hokum. He's a writer unable to find a way to end his popular book series, about a conquistador in the desert, in a way that isn't incredibly violent. He's a man filled with anger, pain and regret yet is content to live in it than let people in. He verbally humiliates a kindhearted bellboy and finds the town's superstitions to be a load of, well, hokum. So when Bauman makes a decision to kill himself halfway through the movie, the audience really can't see it being as a great loss.
And yet it is at this halfway point where Hokum, content to be just a creepy haunted hotel film becomes something far darker and disturbing. Not content to return home, Ohm becomes determined to solve what happened to hotel worker, Fiona (Florence Ordesh), a sweet young woman working at the hotel bar. Ohm soon finds himself locked in the honeymoon suite with who knows what. The comparisons to Stephen King's 1408 are evident, specifically focused on two traumatized men battling demons in a hotel. But there's an additional layer of folkloric disturbance in the hotel room that brings things to a near-mythical level.
The room itself is filled to bursting with disturbing items. Seriously, you'll never look a word carved chair or gold-plated cherubs the same way again. Ohm is forced to use both a cramped dumbwaiter as well as try to unlock a small door underneath a desk, both anxiety-inducing in how close the camera gets. Mc Carthy isn't content to show as much as make you hear. It's far more frightening to hear the wailing and screaming of the witch than see her in full. This is certainly a movie that decides to focus on old-school frights than what more modern horror features are.
When the terror is on screen it also covers up for the thin storytelling. Who is the bizarre, bug-eyed TV host Ohm keeps seeing? Is there some significance to him in Bauman's life or in the city they're in? Who knows. Has Bauman apparently just lived as a sad virgin for most of his life? There seems to be zero relationships he's ever had short of his parents. These moments aren't necessarily to enjoy the spookiness of the story, but Bauman becoming a detective, at this point in his life, would have more heft with a little bit more context short of: this person was nice to me, once.
Regardless, Hokum is a very effective throwback to haunted house stories of old. Scott and the small cast are solid, though it's the sound mix and production design that really unnerve. Don't expect much meat to it and just let the creepy vibes consume you.
Grade: C+
Hokum is in theaters Friday.
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