Director Damian McCarthy affirms his position as a modern master of horror with Hokum, a haunted hotel chiller of tense atmosphere and hair-raising scares that surprises with its strong emotional core.
The history of cinema has shown that the third film is where some of the biggest filmmakers truly established themselves as more than hype. It’s where Spielberg released Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Scorsese made Mean Streets, and Friedkin thrilled with The French Connection. For Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy Hokum will be his calling card to the big leagues; his first Hollywood production that doesn’t compromise on his now patented form of dread filled, carefully constructed jump-out-of-your-seat horror, homed in the likes of Caveat and Oddity beforehand, resulting in his most accomplished work yet.
Hokum stars Adam Scott as Ohm Bauman, a successful novelist of little social graces who travels to rural Ireland to place his parent’s ashes at The Bilberry Woods Hotel where they spent their honeymoon. When Ohm investigates the disappearance of a local woman (Florence Ordesh), he finds himself in the hotel’s sectioned off honeymoon suite that is reportedly haunted by a 400-year-old witch, a folk-tale that becomes a frightening reality.
Haunted motel/hotel movies can be tricky to pull-off, mostly because of the spectre of The Shining looms heavy. Hokum, however, delivers upon its promise of creepy-shenanigans thanks not only to McCarthy’s masterful handle of dread inducing scares, but his deft ability to weave emotionally strong introspective drama and engaging murder mystery into the proceedings.
McCarthy’s decision to have his lead character of (the curiously named) Ohm be a cynical bastard is risky yet one that works thanks to Adam Scott’s ability to play morose while leaving enough space to be a sympathetic figure during moments when dealing with trauma-induced grief. Curiosity is, of course, Ohm’s biggest weakness that has him sticking his nose into the dark recesses of a folk-horror tale like a slab-of-meat on a hook in witch-infested darkness, only for the horrors of a deep hellscape to ascend for their fill of flesh.
The resulting horrors are terrifically squirm-inducing; a cascade of nightmare imagery that shuffles with a sinister gait and transforms Scott’s assured sceptic into a shuddering little boy, the gothic visual tones from cinematographer Colm Hogan (Christy) capturing this traumatising cat-and-mouse game in the confined space of a suite of the damned.
That McCarthy can make our hearts ache while scarring the crap out of us is testament to his storytelling, with Hokum a film that is as much about the heavy weight of grief as it is the doom-laden spectre of darkness.
