With: Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Florence Ordesh, Will O’Connell, Michael Patric, Brendan Conroy, Austin Amelio, Mallory Adams, Sioux Carroll
Written by: Damian Mc Carthy
Directed by: Damian Mc Carthy
MPAA Rating: R for some violent/disturbing content, and language
While Damian Mc Carthy's horror movie Hokum is a little short on story and scares, it makes up for those drawbacks with Adam Scott's caustic performance and its irresistible Ireland-Halloween-haunted-hotel atmosphere.
Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) is a writer, putting the finishing touches on his latest "Conquistador" novel. He goes through his late parents' things and decides to travel to Ireland, to the Bilberry Woods Hotel, where they once honeymooned, to spread their ashes.
He meets the strange hermit Jerry (David Wilmot), who lives in a camper in the woods, and is said to have murdered his wife. The hotel is preparing for its annual Halloween celebration, but Ohm only wants to drink. At the bar, he begins chatting with hotel bartender Fiona (Florence Ordesh). He gets drunk and confrontational, and goes to his room. Fiona has a bad feeling and checks on him, finding him having tried to hang himself.
When Ohm is released from the hospital, he returns to the hotel to speak to her, but finds that she went missing on Halloween night. He also learns about the closed-off Honeymoon Suite, supposedly haunted by a witch. He decides to stick around to find out what happened to Fiona.
Written and directed by Damian Mc Carthy (Caveat, Oddity), Hokum takes its biggest risk with the casting of Scott, who specializes in stingingly arrogant, rude characters. He takes that route here with Ohm Bauman, although he expands his repertoire to include remorse and curiosity, as well as trauma from a childhood tragedy. He makes this flawed character interesting.
Images from Bauman's conquistador novel are effective, but don't add much to the movie overall, and there's little reason for Bauman to stay for a full week at the hotel and treat everyone there with such disdain. (It also doesn't quite feel right that he would attempt suicide.)
So the story drags a little, and then the ultimate Big Bad, a witch, feels fairly familiar. But there isn't a scene that goes by that doesn't sing with the richness of Ireland, as well as the amazing hotel, whose lobby is decorated with models populated by nightmare-inducing figurines of children. Hokum is the kind of movie that makes horror hounds want to live inside of it, as long as they keep on the lookout for stray witches.
