Hokum review: Eerie vibes, weak storytelling
It’s surprising to see comedy star Adam Scott leading a horror movie, but I knew from watching Severance that he can do pretty much anything. I wasn’t a big fan of Hokum, but it is a solid showcase for Scott and proves that he can act in comedy, horror and everything else in between.
In Damian McCarthy‘s horror, he plays a famous, entitled writer named Ohm Bauman who is struggling to finish his latest book. He travels to a remote hotel in Ireland, where his parents spent their honeymoon, to scatter their ashes. When the hotel’s bartender Fiona (Florence Ordesh) goes missing on Halloween, Ohm becomes convinced that her disappearance is connected to the hotel’s haunted honeymoon suite, which has been closed to guests for years.
Hokum is big on creepy atmosphere, jump scares and startling visuals but not particularly concerned with telling a coherent, satisfying story. McCarthy tries to combine an Irish folklore horror with a mystery, an escape room situation and a crime story. He crams too many ideas and nefarious characters into one movie, and the focus feels too wide. Perhaps he should have dialled it back and done one or two of these things well instead of spreading himself so thin.
The film isn’t super scary and a bit too over-reliant on jump scares (of mixed effectiveness). However, there are a few creepy figures, the tension is palpable, and the brilliant sound design helps build an unsettling atmosphere. The production design of the creepy hotel suite is perfect, making it a place you wouldn’t want to be for long, and its various entrances and exits are clever. However, incorporating a very human crime into the story undermines the supernatural scares.
Hokum has a lot of good ideas, effective visuals, a few unexpectedly funny moments and a brilliant turn from Scott as the bitter, rude asshole (yet you root for him anyway). But there are so many symbols and teases that don’t amount to much and loose threads that left me with so many questions. I was quite disappointed that McCarthy did not attempt to answer some of them. The film is also bookended with scenes taken from Bauman’s conquistador story and I did not care for those.
Many horror films feel like a collection of ideas – taped together with a creepy setting and vibe – rather than a whole story. Hokum is very much one of those.
In cinemas from Friday 1st May