Hokum

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★1/2

Rated: M

Directed by: Damian McCarthy

Written by: Damian McCarthy

Produced by: Derek Dauchy, Mairtin de Barra, Steven Schneider, Roy Lee, Ruth Treacy, Julianne Forde

Starring: Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot.

‘I just have a bad feeling.’

A puffing sound of effort opens to a soldier in armour, lost in the desert.

A writer’s hand trembles as he searches for the next line in the story, the writing an escape from the apparition haunting his house.

Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) is an alcoholic writer, haunted by his past.

Ohm opens a box of memories: photos of his dead parents.  A gun.

Ohm travels to Ireland to scatter his parents’ ashes, back to where they had their honeymoon.  But no one goes into the honeymoon suite.  It’s locked.  Haunted.

Hokum is a film about grief, guilt and folklore.

The setting of the film is a hotel lost in a forest; of the big red wood where Ohm scatters his parents’ ashes; where he meets, Jerry (David Wilmot).

‘There are some oddballs walking around these parts,’ and Jerry is certainly one of them.

There’s a tilt into dark comedy here, with the threat of old tales to scare children and a bitter writer who doesn’t care so much for Irish hospitality.

‘Maybe I can bring up my son’s book and you can sigh it for him?’

‘Nah.’

Hokum is a psychological horror with moments of scary as an apparition’s glowing eyes glint in the dark.

The bleak aging hotel of creaking floorboards and faded wallpaper gives the story a foundation, but instead of a dark heavy feeling, the oddball characters offset the heavy so the viewing is set to the psychology of the story instead of the oppressive cold of being trapped in a basement with a witch sobbing a laugh as she approaches with shackles to drag the unsuspecting to the underworld.

Hokum isn’t a terrifying film; but there’s enough to bring an intensity to a story that’s more about character, all shown with: flashes of nightmarish rabbit men, a dirty black and white change in perspective and a dead body dressed in a rabbit suit.  OK, some of the film’s scary.  Those rabbit men are next level creepy.  And the ghosts are shown in a way that keeps up a belief in the character Ohm seeing an underworld.

But the film takes a little thought to get there, like a puzzle to solve to get out of a basement.

There’s a stretch of emotional resonance that’s offset by the creepy scares so neither the horror nor drama is absolutely successful but together the film becomes a thought-provoking creeper that’s worth a watch.