At first glance, the setting for Hokum seems simple and familiar within the horror genre—a small, eerie, secluded hotel in Ireland, possibly haunted by a witch. However, as the title suggests, there’s more to the story than just a haunting. Director Damian McCarthy, known for the chilling Oddity in 2024, crafts a tightly woven, occasionally very frightening narrative that leads both the characters and us on a disturbing journey of discovery.
Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) is a writer with an attitude that makes him almost immediately unlikable. He travels to a hotel in Ireland to scatter the ashes of his dead parents, where they went for their honeymoon. His mother died in a tragic accident, his father later drank himself to death, and so Bauman is here trying to exorcize some of his own personal demons as well.
The scene itself is very telling, as we watch Bauman treat his mother’s ashes differently from how he treats his father’s. The man’s conflict, confusion, and anger are real. It gives us some quick insight into the struggles the author is going through.
The small Irish hotel has a strange, creepy vibe, helped in no small part by the people Bauman encounters. While checking in, he is immediately immersed in a dark story being told to a couple of kids, an ominously unsettling start. Later, in the bar, Bauman has a rude interaction with the bellhop (Will O’Connell) and meets Fiona (Florence Ordesh), who is indifferent to the writer’s attitude.
Bauman feels somewhat attached to Fiona, so when she goes missing after a Halloween party, he doesn’t stop searching for her. He discovers the only area of the hotel that hasn’t been checked is the always locked Honeymoon Suite. This is, of course, where the witch is rumored to live.
The stage is now set for the film’s creepier parts, and the talent in front of and behind the camera really delivered. Writer-director Damian McCarthy has not only crafted a well-thought-out story but also woven scares and creepiness throughout the film, surprising viewers and putting them on edge as they can’t predict what’s coming next.
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McCarthy brought his team from Oddity, including cinematographer and director of photography Colm Hogan and editor Brian Philip Davis. Both continue their excellent work here. Hogan shoots and frames scenes in a way that gives the audience the sense of experiencing them in real time. Davis, working with McCarthy, constructs scenes to keep the film well-paced.
For his part, Adam Scott is wonderfully abrasive and off-putting at times in the film, giving us something different from him, and it works well. His character seems immediately unlikable, but as the film progresses, we realize there is more going on than meets the eye. The tortured writer story is not new, but Scott makes it feel fresh through the way his character and the film are constructed.
The demons he carries with him are reflected in his writing, an open book, if you will, of the terrible burden he bears every day. He never really becomes likable, just tolerable. It’s a credit to both McCarthy’s writing and Scott’s acting, which create a dark soul that somehow fits into the madness that inhabits the Irish hotel.
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There is also an odd sense of humor that comes and goes throughout the film, which doesn’t feel out of place and adds to the weirdness. Hotel handyman Fergal (Michael Patric), who enjoys using his crossbow on goats, and Jerry (David Wilmot), who lives in a van and consumes liquid homemade magic-mushroom concoctions, add to Bauman’s general annoyance. It all pushes him into that perfect state that ultimately collides with both reality and folklore, rounding out a solid setup for unleashing the creepiness that dwells in the hotel’s very walls.
Hokum kind of sneaks up on the viewer, dropping them into a world that seems off-putting from the get-go, then steadily building scares and tension throughout the story with grace and precision. McCarthy has found his stride here, hitting that sweet spot where he knows how to scare an audience with what seem like simple ideas, without pandering to them, making the film a wonderful, creepy viewing experience.
