‘Hokum’ Review
Stars: Adam Scott, David Wilmot, Peter Coonan, Florence Ordesh, Will O’Connell, Michael Patric | Written and Directed by Damian McCarthy
Adam Scott stars in the Irish haunted-hotel horror Hokum, from writer/director Damian McCarthy, who previously made Oddity and Caveat. As such, it’s a solid enough piece of work, strong on atmosphere and jump scares, but a little rough around the edges when it comes to story.
Scott plays American writer Ohm Bauman, and the film opens with a dramatisation of the novel he’s trying to finish, as Austin Amelio’s conquistador considers murdering a child in the desert. However, a spooky moment in his room jolts Bauman out of finishing the novel, and instead he travels to Ireland, checking in at the remote Billberry Woods Hotel.
Once there, Bauman reveals himself as an unpleasant character, being rude and arrogant with several of the hotel staff, before a nasty incident sees him ending up in hospital. On his return to the hotel, he discovers that receptionist Fiona (Florence Ordesh) – the only one he had been relatively nice to – has gone missing, so he goes looking for her, which is how he finds himself trapped in the apparently haunted bridal suite. But what’s really going on?
McCarthy introduces a number of different elements to the story, so there’s a lot going on. First, there’s Bauman’s evidently tragic backstory, which is part of the reason he’s come to this specific hotel in the first place, suggesting he’s haunted by the ghosts from his own past.
Then there’s an apparent supernatural element – the figure in the bridal suite is supposedly a witch, who was trapped there by the elderly hotel owner (Brendan Conroy) long ago. And finally, the disappearance of Fiona might be down to an altogether more human threat, such as Jerry (David Wilmot), a magic mushroom-loving homeless man that Bauman meets in the woods, or Feargal (Michael Patric), the hotel owner’s son, who spends his free time shooting the mischievous goats that roam the hotel grounds and jump on guests’ cars.
However, Hokum‘s screenplay doesn’t quite pull everything together in a satisfactory fashion. For one thing, the apparent witch is given no backstory whatsoever, so nothing to connect her to either the hotel or Bauman in narrative terms. On a similar note, the introduction of Jerry’s magic mushroom concoction suggests there will be a hallucinatory quality to the story at some point, but the script bungles that idea in baffling fashion.
On the plus side, McCarthy knows his way around the deployment of a decent jump scare, and he pulls off the same trick a few times, mostly with the sudden appearance of a spooky face or figure in the dark. He’s also a dab hand when it comes to establishing a spooky atmosphere, aided considerably by some excellent production design work on the hotel, Colm Hoga’s shadowy cinematography and Philip Davis’ appropriately spooky score.
On top of that, Scott delivers a solid central performance, and it’s interesting to see his usual stand-offish demeanour used to such negative effect here. There’s also strong support from Wilmot, and from Will O’Connell as Alby, the bellhop-slash-aspiring writer, who receives the brunt of Bauman’s rudeness.
In short, as haunted hotel movies go, Hokum is decent enough, and the various jump scares ensure that it gets the job done. It’s just a shame that the script’s other promising elements are so underused, particularly the hotel’s supply of pesky goats, which surely should have been good for at least one scary moment.
***½ 3.5/5
Hokum is in cinemas now.
