Michael Fairbanks
Director Damian McCarthy’s previous outing Oddity was essentially a long waiting game. A woman was trapped in a house with a creepy looking wicker man who would move in strange ways when we weren’t looking. It was a game gradual, crushing paranoia as our intrusive thoughts about what this thing could do ran wild. Hokum stages a similar spiral with a larger setting. We have a spooky Irish motel with multiple levels with a malevolent witch somewhere inside and an author who finds himself drawn to move through a darkened maze to find her. Hokum often feels more like a point-and-click mystery-adventure game than outright horror. It’s a very slow burn, not the unhinged thrill ride that its unnerving teaser trailer promises. It will very much appeal to those who gravitate towards those trappings.
We follow persnickety writer Ohm (Adam Scott) as he goes to a woodland Irish motel to spread his parents ashes in the place where they had their honeymoon. He’s pretty well known, so the employees try to connect with him but he completely rejects their advances. The only person he’s somewhat friendly towards is bartender Fionna (Florence Ordesh) who unfortunately is the person to find Ohm attempting suicide in his room moments after they chat. When he is released from the hospital and returns to the hotel, Fionna has disappeared. The superstitious folks around him claim that she has likely been taken by a witch of local folklore, which Ohm is skeptical of. Nevertheless, he starts to investigate the hotel while also grappling with a deep childhood trauma that starts to manifest on this twisted journey.
The most enjoyable part of Hokum for me was watching Adam Scott play such a deeply unlikable character. Even when he’s played morally ambiguous people in the past, he’s always let at least a bit of his snarky charm peak through. Ohm is a cynical jerk who intentionally alienates anybody who tries to be friendly with him. Scott’s sarcasm is weaponized for maximum cruelty that would make Ebenezer Scrooge tell him to chill out. This facade starts to slip once he’s left to his own devices to find Fionna but only in a setting where he’s the only person who can see how scared he is.
The exploration of the hotel is a bit dull. Ohm spends a great deal of time fumbling around for clues while remembering the exposition dumps of lore that he was treated to earlier in the film. It takes a very long time before we are treated to more than spooky noises and occasional glimpses at the disturbing event that shaped Ohm’s unfortunate personality. This segment of the film will probably gel for folks who love to soak in the abstract possibility of scares. Those who will read online ghost stories just to get to that one terrifying image or sound that rewards them for their interest. It’s just a bit too minimalist for me and the angle of childhood trauma in a prestige horror movie like this is just so played out.
Once it is finally time for Hokum’s main event, McCarthy treats us to some very competently executed but somewhat underwhelming scares. Most of them involve Conjuring style lengthy buildups to a thunderously loud noise and a creepy old lady face. The most effective moments are when he will hold on a dark liminal space and let us look for the specters in the darkness. He does a great job of convincing us that there is ‘almost certainly’ something in a particular corner of the all black screen. The hotel is beautifully designed, providing a perfect setting for this gothic mystery with decrepit rooms and a claustrophobic slow moving elevator to an underground cavern. That alone may convince folks that Hokum is delivering the constant tension and scares it postures at. It is just never quite as eventful as it should be.
Hokum demands a great deal of effort for only minor reward. However, I can certainly acknowledge that Damian McCarthy is a skilled filmmaker. This largely achieves what it is trying to do and if the positive reception from my audience is any indication, it will certainly scare enough people to be a success. It just lacks Oddity’s originality, very much fitting the mold of mystery box horror that Neon loves to unleash on the public. Hopefully for the next outing, McCarthy is willing to play a bit more with his formula.
