The idea of leaving your home and seeking refuge elsewhere, whether temporarily or for a longer stretch of time, is meant to offer reprieve from reality, a chance to escape and see another part of the world. Yet, many of us have experienced trips that are anything other than luxurious, which usually come when there is a specific duty – professional or personal – that has to be accomplished. This is where we meet Ohm Bauman, an American writer who has decided to take a journey to a remote part of Ireland with the intention of scattering his parents’ ashes in the same forest where they had spent their honeymoon decades before. Taking up residence at the Bilberry Woods Hotel, a quaint location that promises a memorable stay steeped heavily in the local culture, Ohm finds himself encountering a rogue’s gallery of eccentric people, each of whom has their own set of seemingly very secure beliefs that they wish to rub off on their new visitor, who is otherwise resistant to their attempts to be friendly. However, when it turns out that the hotel has its own dark secrets, many of which go back to the same myths and legends that he has refused to even consider as being relevant, Ohm realises that he needs to promptly escape, by any means necessary. A peculiar work of contemporary horror that feels both captivating and deeply unsettling, Hokum is a fascinating film that may not always be able to build much momentum for the most part, but which nonetheless still earns our respect for how it is willing to tackle some very deep themes, and credit must go to director Damian McCarthy (a very interesting young director and someone who we’ve been observing closely for a couple of years now), whose previous films Caveat and Oddity were minor sensations in arthouse horror, carefully-constructed psychological portraits of the past, handcrafted by a filmmaker whose willingness to engage with some intimidating ideas is worth mentioning, even if the final product does leave quite a bit to be desired.

There’s a fair amount of discourse about the role grief plays in the development of the horror genre, with many making the assertion that most horror (if not all of it) has its roots embedded very heavily in the subject of trauma, with the argument being that only those who have suffered in some way are capable of actually capturing fear and despair on screen or on the page effectively. I don’t quite subscribe to the idea that it is a universal concept, but it’s undeniable to see just how far many contemporary films go to use terror as a vessel to explore the pain of the human condition. Hokum is yet another film that centres around a complex protagonist who is tiring of lugging around decades of emotional and psychological baggage, which comes to a head when he is confronted by the dark realities of his own mind while in a remote, isolated part of the world. McCarthy is very much invested in exploring trauma as a theme, with both of his previous films also centring around characters working through the weight of the past, which manifests in encounters with the supernatural. Through this, the film weaves together a psychological character study about a man seeking answers, with an in-depth analysis of Irish folklore, which is always interesting to explore on screen, especially for a genre that has often drawn a lot of its most disturbing imagery from the intersections between the past and the present. Hokum is certainly not saying anything particularly shocking or revolutionary, and is primarily functioning as quite a simple examination of a man trying to find his way forward while avoiding very real physical dangers posed by his accidental evocation of sinister, otherworldly beings. Perhaps it’s hackneyed to use the concept of a malicious spectre to represent guilt and remorse for the past, but in the case of this film, it does work for the most part, especially since there’s nothing really being said here that doesn’t at least partially resonate.

It’s obvious that Hokum is a film with some tremendous ideas, and the director is certainly committed enough to the premise to infuse the story with a few genuinely strong themes. However, when it comes to working with the material and actually turning it into something memorable, we start to see the seams beginning to show. The concept is good, but it struggles in terms of the execution, a result of a concept that is undeniably very interesting, but which is too hefty to actually be sustained by what is evidently a much smaller production. It’s always a peculiar criticism to say that a film is too ambitious, but that’s certainly the case here, since it spends so much time circling the cultural elements, leading us to expect a film that leans heavily into the folk horror, before becoming just another haunted house film, one that tries to draw our attention to the more interesting qualities beneath the surface, but ultimately proves to actually be quite shallow when it comes to delivering on the terror. There is a small subset of horror films that I feel is reasonable to say should not need to be scary – sometimes it’s more effective to have a film that is more unsettling than it is terrifying, since this can open the door to some fascinating conversation about what it is that scares us and makes us feel uneasy. Whether it’s a case of the director not knowing how to build this momentum into a meaningful crescendo, or simply a matter of studio interference, where it was likely that McCarthy was told to be less opaque about the resolution behind this film, Hokum is not as effective in execution as we may hope, being far too limited in scope to be particularly memorable. It is well-made, and the film makes good use of the eerie pastoral setting (although more could’ve been done in the surroundings to the hotel, but I understand that it may not have been possible, both in terms of resources and narrative), but it just ultimately feels a bit too hollow after a while, never truly becoming all that captivating after a certain point.

As is often the case, Hokum sees another pairing between someone we usually associate with comedy and a genre that is not always conducive to much laughter. Comedians and horror tend to go together hand-in-hand, since making people laugh and scaring audiences are both skills that require full commitment to some very challenging premises. Adam Scott is not new to more dramatic work, as he’s proven to be quite a good actor when it comes to smaller productions where he can’t rely on being funny, but rather digging deeper and finding more nuances beneath the surface. This becomes quite clear with Hokum, since he’s playing quite an unconventional character, a wry and sarcastic author who wholeheartedly believes that he has a handle over the world that surrounds him, only to be plunged into a state of existential despair once he realises that there are forces far more sinister than he or anyone else realised at play. He leads the film well, and like many lesser actors have made clear in their career, he understands that leading a horror film is not necessarily an opportunity to do wall-to-wall acting, since he is nothing more than a pawn being played in quite a challenging game of cat-and-mouse that takes up the entire film. Scott is very good, and the supporting cast do tend to match him in most ways, with McCarthy enlisting a fascinating group of Irish actors to play the eccentric local colour that makes up this ensemble – Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Florence Ordesh, Will O’Connell (as the film’s most enigmatic character) and Brendan Conroy are all terrific, working through intentionally one-dimensional characters and turning them into far more complex figures that anchor the film and present themselves as being just as impressive as Scott, who blends in seamlessly with the surroundings and proves that he is as skilled at horror as he is humour, a difficult combination to get right.

Hokum is an undeniably well-made film that’s biggest flaw is its ambition, which weighs it down slightly, attempting to say more than it had the capacity for, and ultimately falling apart slightly when it comes to following through on all of its more promising ideas. It has a lot of potential, and while it doesn’t waste all of it, it ultimately doesn’t manage to elevate itself much higher than the kind of mid-level horror being produced these days, which means that, despite being quite good, it ultimately doesn’t stand out quite as much, since the genre has recently moved to the point where a film has to make one of two decisions: be extremely conventional to the point of being a homage, or be so challenging and unconventional that it is impossible to categorise. Unfortunately, Hokum exists right in the middle, being a well-crafted but ultimately quite shallow work that never really does anything all that impressive or meaningful, being entertaining to a certain point but also not being all that original. Considering it had millennia of folklore and mythology to base itself on, it seems slightly underwhelming that it would choose to go on such a simple, straightforward path – this could’ve been akin to The Wicker Man in how it both disturbs and challenges the confines of the genre, but ultimately seems more than content to relish in its simplicity, never really becoming more than the sum of its parts. Good performances, stunning filmmaking and a decent story to help keep us entertained, but there’s nothing much that lingers with us in the aftermath, which seemed like nothing more than an enormous missed opportunity.