Hokum Review: Atmospheric & Highly Affective!

Do you believe in ghosts or that a house can be haunted? Despite centuries of stories being written about ghosts from the afterlife inhabiting places and even people, the idea as to whether it is all pure fiction or a part of reality depends on who you ask. Going even deeper, folklore is another set of stories some believe in that provides commentary on a specific country’s system of beliefs and ideas. It allows explanations to be attached to ideas outside the realm of possibilities. These specific stories exist because they color in a long history that helps provide meaning to modern times.

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All that being said, are these stories real or is it all just hokum? Damien McCarthy, best known for his Irish’s horror film including Caveat (2020) and Oddity (2024) has always had a flair for the paranormal told in a folklore feeling style. His newest film Hokum, takes on how grief ands nihilism often create a barrier between an individual and their ability to be open minded towards a world they cannot see. One where spirits and ghosts reside in mundane places to interact with the living. Hokum is a highly affective gothic Irish horror film utilizing McCarthy’s talents of suspense to keep audiences on their toes while also creating layered characters worth rooting for.

Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) an author hoping to finally finish his newest novel, visits the Bilberry Woods Hotel in the Irish countryside as a quiet getaway to get his novel’s epilogue done while also scattering his parents ashes where they honeymooned decades before. When Fiona (Florence Ordesh) the hotel bartender goes missing Ohm suspects someone or something inside the hotel may be a part of it. Between hearing of the hotel’s haunted honeymoon suite and the strange disappearance, Ohm decides to look into things with local hermit and paranormal believer Jerry (David Wilmot) learning more about his own familial history in the process.

Hokum is McCarthy’s best film yet, constantly improving upon his films each time by holding a closer lens to his characters and how the real world and the spiritual world intertwine. As shown in his previous films Caveat and Oddity, McCarthy is masterful at displaying how the real world and the world of the dead play in tandem with one another. Where so many horror films exhibit what entities or spirits are doing to character in the real world and their effect, Hokum is another example of how McCarthy is more interested in the blending of these two worlds to show how they each play a part in the others.

He displays the importance of not looking at them as two separate world but the same one in different plains. This allows the film to examine Ohm’s nihilism and skepticism and the danger that it puts him in, blinding him from the realities of his own past and his relationship with the dead. The film has an amazing blend of Irish temperament and terror, displaying characters that are drawn to haunting tales and folklore to only feel unprepared upon experiencing it firsthand.

There are plenty of jump scares that are utilized well to exhibit how every movement and decision plays along with the spiritual worlds plans as opposed to being the reason they show themselves. The gothic nature of its atmosphere ties well with its Halloween setting, especially in a century old hotel. In the same way the hotel has a long history attached to it, Hokum uses its setting to also show how an individual’s history can feel like an ongoing tale that can either have a happy or bleak ending. Also, the constant use of bells as a sound of assistance, help, and beginnings plays fabulously with the film’s sound.

Hokum does an incredible job of displaying its themes in a subdued way that emphasizes how keeping an open mind can allow an individual to see and experience more than what’s can be seen. McCarthy’s script that follows Ohm, a man with a closed mind, constantly seeing a bleak end in life, displays how there is safety in an openness to ideas and the possibility of a world beyond ours.

In the film, there is a pattern of seeing characters who believe hauntings of the hotel and the spirit world never hurt by spiritual entities, only humans. The more that Ohm begins to believe in Fiona and Jerry’s stories, the more he is able to see and combat those who show potential harm. This coincides with the general idea that the more a person stays open and cautious to the possibility of things outside their grasp, the better off they will be. Hokum is yet another of McCarthy’s films that feels atmospheric in its Irish setting while also possessing a quality of how fear often comes from the unknown. And, how this can be lessened the more one stays open and hopeful.

‘Hokum’ Rating – 4/5

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