Hokum review
A haunted man in a haunted hotel room.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Hokum
Directed by Damian McCarthy
Written by Damian McCarthy
Starring Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Florence Ordesh, Will O’Connell, Michael Patric and Brendan Conroy
Hokum Review
It’s been less than two years since Damian McCarthy’s Oddity hit theaters. It ended up cracking our top ten of 2024 and solidified McCarthy as a director to watch moving forward. His follow up, Hokum, hits theaters soon sporting a broader appeal and a good chance of landing in our 2026 top ten. Hokum is an effective little haunted house (or, in this case, haunted hotel room) story that nearly equals Oddity’s high bar. A bit of a melodramatic ending dings the total package a bit…but fans of haunted house movies will find plenty of care put into this one.
Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) takes a trip to Ireland to spread his parents’ ashes at a location he knows they liked. He’s a writer with a heap of personal demons and a poor attitude to match. Intrigued by the locked up honeymoon suite at his hotel…Bauman learns of a local legend involving a witch supposedly locked in the room. When someone goes missing…he’s compelled to break into the suite and get answers.
Hokum, like Oddity, excels at creating a sense of dread. It features a host of scary imagery to throw at the screen too…but it’s the dread that makes it work. We spend a lot of time locked in that honeymoon suite with Bauman, and all its secrets. This is a well-paced movie that never feels like the slow burn style it might seem to be on the surface. McCarthy has mastered that. You might look back on Hokum and think “not a lot actually happened for some long stretches”. And you’d be right…but you’re unlikely to be bored while that nothing is happening. The suspense and threat of the unknown make the time unbearable in a good way.
Bauman isn’t a likable character at first. He’s not supposed to be. He’s a writer struggling to end his story…traumatized by a tragic event from his past. The ending he comes up with is incredibly bleak. What’s even bleaker is that he might never finish writing the ending anyway. His depression, and a copious amount of alcohol, might do him in before he can publish it.
While Bauman is annoyed by nearly everyone he meets at the hotel…he does hit it off with the bartender, Fiona (Florence Ordesh). Fiona tells him about the witch in the honeymoon suite…which Bauman dismisses as hokum. When Fiona goes missing…Bauman wants to figure out what happened to her. He isn’t alone in this quest. The local oddball wanted for questioning in her disappearance is sure that she’s dead. He’s seen her ghost, he claims. And it told him to go to the honeymoon suite.
From there, Hokum largely becomes the haunted house movie it excels at being. Bauman ends up investigating the room…and becoming locked inside of it. An annoyance that soon turns into a nightmare as the sounds and secrets locked inside with him threaten to finish the job his depression started. From a connected basement connected by a one-way dumbwaiter to his own internal trauma coming to the forefront…Bauman is in a fight for survival. Oh…and there might be a witch, after all.
There is some real world drama that unfolds in Hokum to go along with its haunted hotel room. The central mystery works well enough…but it mostly compliments what really makes Hokum one to watch. The haunted man in his haunted room. Bauman may not be likable, at least to start, but he is a well-rounded enough character to be interested in following. We learn what’s troubling him…both internally and externally. We also learn all about the secrets inside of the honeymoon suite. Combined with some colorful characters that work with and against him…Hokum has a lot of threads working together. For the most part…it works well.
The only real caveat to that is the ending of the movie. While the different threads pull together just fine…I couldn’t help but feel that Hokum opted for melodrama in the end. It’s not bad…and it’s earned well enough…but it almost feels too saccharine for my taste. Maybe it’ll suit you just fine. It’s part of that broader appeal I mentioned up top. Oddity was a dark little tale whose central concept might have been a tad too off center for some. Hokum is far more familiar and ends on a brighter note. But it does have full control over what it’s doing within its haunted house…and might just get under the skin of that broader audience should they find themselves checking in to this honeymoon suite.
Scare Value
Hokum might not be the…oddity…that McCarthy’s last movie was…but it continues to showcase his mastery of suspense and dread. The honeymoon suite contains plenty of effective scares…and it makes up the majority of Hokum. That’s enough to make it an easy recommendation. It might even be enough to land it in our top ten horror movies of the year when the end of the year rolls around. McCarthy has proven to be a master of sustaining dread…and Hokum puts that to great use.
4/5
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