In theaters now from NEON!
Directed/Written by Damian McCarthy.
Check out the trailer here!!
Adam Scott plays Ohm Bauman, a disillusioned writer who journeys to Ireland to scatter the ashes of his parents at the spot where they spent their honeymoon. Ohm finds himself in the middle of a mystery of a missing bartender he met the first night he spent in the hotel—a place that is rumored to be haunted by a witch locked away in the honeymoon suite.
Though he’s only done two feature films, Damian McCarthy has proven himself as a filmmaker to be on the lookout for. Like many of you, I too was blown back in my chair when I saw CAVEAT and its follow-up ODDITY, at his gift at creating the deadliest of jump-scares. Now, I don’t measure a movie by the amount of jumps and startles I experience while watching, but having seen so many fake jump scares—like a cat jumping onto screen or a friend popping up around the corner, that I am appreciative of McCarthy’s jump scares are an art form all their own. His jump scares do the same piano bang after a long buildup, but the difference between McCarthy and some Blumhouse hack is that the buildup is painfully slow and most notably, the payoff is an image that is truly startling. HOKUM has quite a few jump scares, a few of which were ruined in the trailer, but they were unsettling and downright heart-stopping nevertheless.
HOKUM is McCarthy’s most mainstream film to date with a name actor and a big theatrical release. Not bad for his 3rd effort in feature filmmaking. And while this bigger budget means a bigger story, McCarthy still tells an intimate and effective ghost story filled with mystery, superstition, and of course, witches. Entrenched in Irish folklore, McCarthy is not only telling a compelling ghost story, but an interesting human story as well. The mystery, while it’s not necessarily the reason for the butts in the seats of the theater, was welcome and added depth where other horror films often phone it in. It’s wonderful how McCarthy switches between the mundane and the uncanny so seamlessly and make both so important to the plot.
McCarthy also does something with the intricacies of the world he is building, zooming in on the various chotchkies and brick-a-brack that decorate the settings of his films. He is a filmmaker who very much makes specific choices as to what sits on shelves, adorns walls, and is depicted in paintings and pictures in every scene. He zooms in close on these ornate trinkets that one might just browse by at a garage sale or thrift store, but the attention to detail adds to the story, giving the whole film feel like some age-old relic, unearthed, dangerous, and watching you from some inconspicuous space on a shelf. There’s a wonderful scene where the owner of the hotel is telling a dark fairy tale to some kids that cuts between the kids and the storyteller, but as the story goes on, it plays out by zooming in on tiny sculptures of terrified children that exemplifies McCarthy’s gift for bringing historical weight to his scenes through tiny details.
Adam Scott is sort of a divisive actor. He can some off as arrogant, stuffy, and prudish at times. The kind of person you meet at a dinner party who sucks up all the air from the room and makes you want to leave. But he also has played engaging and likable roles. So the guy’s got some range. Well, HOKUM isn’t going to win over anyone as his character Ohm is a complete asshole in this film. So much so that I was afraid it was going to be one of those movies where I’d be rooting for the lead to get kakked. But because he is the only person on screen for the bulk of the film and due to an extremely disturbing, and effective moment of weakness at the beginning, I found myself terrified for his well being despite his arrogance. I get what the actor was going for. He is a man haunted by past mistakes and is there to simply get a job done (disperse his parents’ ashes) and then get the hell back to his miserable life. Being a professional writer, it’s understandable how he becomes prickly when approached by others who have no clue the hardship writers go through to make it.
Hell, I only have a handful of projects made into movies and comics, and I can even admit the frustration I feel when I am approached by up-and-coming writers with their projects looking for advice. Being the softy that I am, I usually end up hearing the person out and giving the same advice other writers have given me, but still it makes for an uncomfortable interaction when someone thinks there’s one magic thing to do to get their work published. So, the early scene where Ohm gets pissy with Alby the bellboy (played remarkably sincere by Will O’Connell) resonated with me on many levels. Still what Ohm does to Alby is a shit thing to do, and it makes rooting for the guy tough when the shit hits the fan.
I love the world McCarthy is creating as all of his films seem to exist in the same universe, whether it is overtly connected or not. The themes of eldritch magic, folklore, and Irish superstition abound in all three of his films, and especially in HOKUM. There are also fantastic little details that thread from one movie to the next, like the bellboy ghost and summoning bell in ODDITY showing up in key scenes in HOKUM. And of course, there’s McCarthy’s rabbit motif that carries on through all three films. It is just that added little oomph that makes you watch the films a little closer than most that really endears me to his work. I don’t know if McCarthy is moving towards some grand INFINITY WAR-style crossover or if it is just little details added to his own amusement, but either way, I appreciate them.
How does HOKUM stack up to McCarthy’s previous films? That’s a tough one. While it is awesome to see McCarthy get noticed and go mainstream, those first two small films were so potently terrifying, that I think I prefer them more. That doesn’t mean that HOKUM is a bad movie. It is filled with scenes that will surely terrify you. But it didn’t quite match that sense of inescapable, creeping dread that filled CAVEAT and didn’t have the perfectly timed, shart-inducing jumps scares of ODDITY. But compared to most everything else out there, HOKUM still is one of the best ghost stories to grace the big screen.
