In “Hokum,” a new supernatural horror outing from Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy, an American writer, Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott), finds himself on the verge of finishing his popular book series about a conquistador with a bleak ending. McCarthy opens the film in the desert with the conquistador from Ohm’s imagination about to commit murder. The scene is interrupted when in the scribe’s home, shrouded in darkness, eerie sounds distract him from what’s on his digital page. The jump scares start there but will only intensify when Ohm travels to the wooded area in Ireland where his now deceased parents spent their honeymoon.
With two other horror features to his name (“Caveat,” “Oddity”), McCarthy has mastered how to conjure up unnerving scenes in mundane spaces, but in this case the accumulation of ideas inside his cauldron makes for a convoluted concoction.
During the first act, McCarthy plants several characters in and around the charmingly outdated hotel where Ohm is staying for the viewer to suspect of wrongdoing later on. There’s the elderly owner (Brendan Conroy), whose only scene sees him spook a pair of children by telling them about a vicious witch from folktales. Witnessing this interaction with disdain, Ohm reveals his antagonistic personality. He wants to be left alone to work, but he’s an author of substantial fame, so the employees, among them the well-meaning receptionist Mal (Peter Coonan), are curious about his visit. Scott plays to his strengths as a performer with an ironic demeanor well-versed in deadpan humor. In an early scene, he viciously belittles timid bellhop and aspiring writer Alby (Will O’Connell). Scott inflicts Ohm’s nonchalant meanness with a piercingly perverse matter-of-factness that places the character as far away as possible from the realm of likeability. He’s an arrogant jerk.
Lurking in the forest is Jerry (David Wilmot), a vagabond living in his van, whose animosity with Fergal (Michael Patric), the inn owner’s prickly adult son, will play a role in how the days ahead will go haywire. And then there’s Fiona (Florence Ordesh), a bartender whose exchange with Ohm introduces him to the mystery of the honeymoon suite, which hasn’t been used in years. Fiona and Alby suggest the reason could be the presence of a witch. Ohm, a cynical skeptic, dismisses their claims. On that same night, Halloween, a suicide attempt, and a disappearance rattle the old hotel. McCarthy then thrusts Ohm into a pursuit of the truth, and of Fiona’s whereabouts. He eventually arrives in the dreaded honeymoon suite.
The time that Ohm spends trapped in that off-limits room, overnight and in near darkness save for a small lamp, packs the film’s most effective scares, but even as information about what’s occurring at this establishment comes to light, more questions about how it’s all meant to fit together arise. The talent of cinematographer Colm Hogan maintains every object and Scott legible to the eye during this extended passage where everything appears coated in gray hues. The hotel’s outdated amenities and overall look — you can almost whiff a musty odor emanating from its dusty fixtures — lend themselves to the narrative: an old bell that communicates with reception or what looks like a dumbwaiter that goes down to the basement are integral to how the plot unfurls. McCarthy astutely uses specific production design elements to heighten the uneasiness of these sequences.
Nightmarish visions of Ohm’s childhood involving his mother suggest that his personal trauma is also haunting him here, not only the witch that Alby claims to have seen before. Though intensely disturbing, a scene where a TV shows a distorted iteration of a character that Ohm watched as a kid rings out of place, even if the context involves his mother’s tragic passing. On top of these apparitions, a human foe, whose motives for committing a crime seem rather nebulous, also exists. The combination of ghosts, dark magic practitioners, and a flesh-and-blood villain turns “Hokum” into an overstuffed, otherworldly entanglement. In that sense, the content lives to its title as a collection of larger-than-life bizarre elements.
McCarthy’s previous effort, “Oddity,” about a spirit haunting a home, was a more focused exploration of unseen presences interacting with the mortal plane with righteous intentions. Nonetheless, there’s plenty of terror inducing imagery in “Hokum” that will satisfy the craving for a visceral scare. These shots mostly come in the form of horrifying faces or masks that momentarily peek through the darkness. Probably none of them match the shock of one particular instance in “Oddity,” but McCarthy knows the language and timing to deploy these moments and succeed at jolting the audience.
McCarthy subverts expectations in that most characters reveal themselves to be the opposite of the archetypes they were broadly painted as, and yet that doesn’t make “Hokum” feel more original. The filmmaker’s desire to give Jerry a bit of a back story beyond his life on the outskirts of society doesn’t extend to any of the other characters but does somewhat bond him to Ohm in a morbid manner: they both feel judged over the death of a loved one. Buoyed by Scott’s level-headed turn — he doesn’t transform into a scream king — “Hokum” is a proficient horror exploit, which hinges on atmosphere instead of gore, even if its many frightening threads feel disjointed, like rooms in distinctly different hotels.
