Hokum
Damian McCarthy is a name that has so far caused me some frustration. His feature debut Caveat and follow-up Oddity are oft-recommended in online cinema spaces and yet when I watched them, I didn’t find them to be much more than nice displays of Cork, Ireland and of McCarthy’s eye for production design. As such, I entered his latest, Hokum, with some trepidation. But as a lover of spooky folklore, authors in rural hotels and Adam Scott, I also had hope. Third time’s a charm?
The film opens with a grubby, dehydrated man and child in the desert and I wondered whether the cinema had put on Tarsem’s The Fall by mistake. After some time we cut to a laptop screen and learn that this is the grim epilogue of the famous Conquistador trilogy by author Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott). He sits in a dimly lit dungeon of affluence and polished concrete as he writes and drinks whiskey, interrupted briefly by the appearance of a figure on the staircase. Who is she? Don’t worry, there’s plenty of Bauman backstory to come.
Spurred by this spectral encounter or perhaps by the desire for more whiskey, Ohm travels to The Bilberry Woods Hotel in Ireland – his parents’ honeymoon location – to scatter their ashes. There he meets an old man in the foyer telling some children a story about a local witch who enslaved children and whom he managed to trap. Ohm gives him a spray about scaring random kids before learning that he’s the hotel owner. Whoopsy.
But he’s not done making a bad impression on the staff: front desk clerk Mal (Peter Coonan) finds Ohm rude and difficult, groundskeeper Fergal (Michael Patric) doesn’t appreciate being lectured after killing a goat and bellboy Alby (Will O'Connell) cops a hot spoon to the back of the hand after asking Ohm to read his manuscript. Two locals have more luck getting on Ohm’s good side, though: bartender Fiona (Florence Ordesh), because she serves booze but also because her assertiveness reminds Ohm of his mother; and van lifer Jerry (David Wilmot), who lives in the woods, loves goats and gives Ohm a flask of moonshine.
Making friends across the pond when you’re a disagreeable American is tough. So when Fiona goes missing and Jerry suspects that the locked up and inaccessible honeymoon suite contains clues to her disappearance, Ohm musters up the small amount of Good Guy energy he’s capable of and stages an after hours investigative coup. Unfortunately for Ohm, the honeymoon suite was locked up for a very good reason. The timer on the supernatural escape room begins.
It gives me quite a bit of satisfaction/relief to say that Hokum is a definite improvement on McCarthy’s previous films. As predicted, its similarities to 1408 and other Stephen King tales featuring a cantankerous writer in a dangerous place far from home (The Shining, Misery) do a lot of the heavy lifting but I also just found it more entertaining and spookily effective than Caveat and Oddity. It has its share of jump scares but it also contains that particular brand of unnatural movement, creepy facial expressions and long spindly fingers slipping past doors that thrill me.
Damian McCarthy wrote and directed the film as he did his previous two and like his previous two, Hokum is a showcase for his and his crew’s knack for production design. I must give special praise to production designer Til Frohlich, set decorator Ciara McKenna and cinematographer Colm Hogan because the honeymoon suite is exquisitely appointed, lit and shot. Close ups of grimacing pewter ornaments, wallpaper overcome by mould, a tub long overdue for draining, a four-poster fit for a very old and sleepy presence...the team have created an image you can smell and would certainly drive an inhabitant mad. It’s nightmarish but to a vintage decor lover, also lowkey aspirational. I only wish we spent more time here.
The film’s other strength is Adam Scott’s central performance. I won’t mince words: Ohm is a cunt. This works really well for me – especially considering that I felt no strong way about any of the characters in McCarthy’s other films – and hiring a bigger, more well-known actor feels appropriate for a character who’s supposed to be a famous author. Ohm being so abrasive and inconsiderate to others softens the initial blow of his entrapment in the suite and strengthens the impact of his search for Fiona. We then warm to him through his plight and the full reveal of his backstory, though I would argue that it overshadows another aspect of the film.
Hokum was promoted on some posters as being “from the producer of Weapons” and it has one key similarity with that film. The problem is, the film spends more time trying to weave in threads of Ohm’s backstory than it does on its central antagonist, confusing the narrative and weakening the lore. The Michael Jackson-looking Bunny (credited as Jack the Jackass) that appears in the trailer and the film’s poster is a secondary figure and one that seemingly has no relevance to the plot outside of Ohm’s backstory. It feels as though McCarthy and co came up with the visual design for this figure and liked it too much to cut it after building out the rest of the story. It’s creepy, sure. But it doesn’t fit seamlessly.
All things considered, Hokum is a solid haunted hotel horror – even if its script is a bit overstuffed. For me, it’s the best thing Damian McCarthy has made thus far and a reason to put West Cork on the itinerary for future travel.
