A recent assumption about modern cinema – challenged by Caitlin Quinlan – is that if a film makes you cry, it must be good. I believe in horror a similar argument is often upheld: if it makes you jump, it must be good. The problem is, just as there are many dramas that evoke tears without becoming memorable, there are many horror films that make me jump but fail to do much else. To this end: Damian McCarthy’s Hokum aims for wet eyes and goosebumps and struggles provide anything more
Hokum follows Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott), a bitter, bestselling author whose success has only reinforced his mean spirit. Despite his winning imagination he cannot open his mind to supernatural possibility – sounds familiar. Fear not though, this arrogant, incredulous protagonist will soon have his skepticism challenged, and where better to prove the existence of the paranormal than an isolated Irish hotel, where the honeymoon suite is off-limits due to a witch trapped inside?
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Although Ohm is unpleasant and at times openly cruel to most of the hotel staff including the manager Mal and hapless hotel porter Alby (Will O’Conell), he softens his spiky demeanour for the young bartender Fiona (Florence Ordesh) who seems to see through his offputting exterior. When she disappears at the hotel’s Halloween party, Ohm becomes determined to solve the mystery.
Starting in decidedly unoriginal territory with a reluctant man haunted by the past and a young woman in peril, Hokum struggles to unveil anything novel, relying on jumpscares of figures who are immediately disappointing once in clear view. With the exception of a rabbit man who gives Donnie Darko’s Frank a (brief) run for his money, all the other ghostly figures that occupy Ohm’s nightmarish reality amount to nothing more than costumey stereotypes, including a gormless 50s housewife and, of course, an unsightly hag, complete with missing teeth and dressed in rags.
The generic nature of Hokum’s setting is as disappointing as its supernatural inhabitants. Despite insisting that we are in Ireland, mainly via drone shot of the country hills and Fiona clutching a pristine copy of a book called ‘Irish Folklore’, everything from the hotel’s haunted halls to the hag itself could be ripped from any generic horror story. Were it not for the Irish accents of every cast member bar Adam Scott, you could be excused for not feeling transported to the Emerald Isle.
While Ohm takes it upon himself to find Fiona, he is (of course!) struggling to contend with his own demons relating to unresolved family trauma, resulting in Hokum possessing a sentimental streak that’s grating rather than chilling. Despite the heavy metaphors and emotionally weighted hauntings, there’s nothing new here – it’s all painfully dull and familiar horror territory.