Irish folk horror and a haunted house full of actual scary moments. (Spoiler-free)
As an avid horror movie fan, it takes a lot to shiver my timbers. When I'm sitting in the dark rows of a cinema during a new release, I sometimes try to view it through the eyes of those who don't revel in scary delights. Regular (some would say normal) people who jump at grotesque faces, get unsettled by hideous screams, and hide their eyes when the blood starts to flow.
During Hokum, I had quite the experience trying to imagine how such folks would react, mainly because I was extremely, deeply unsettled. That doesn't bode well for everyone else. But also, I loved every minute. It's rare to get a scary movie these days that actually delivers honest-to-goodness scares without absolutely wallowing in A24-level trauma dumps that just emotionally punish you for two hours. Hokum achieves this despite having some gnarly generational guilt scarring on the main character, Ohm Bauman.
Ohm is a successful writer visiting the Irish hotel where his deceased parents had their honeymoon, aiming to spread their ashes in the woods nearby and also maybe squeeze in some writing while he's abroad. It's not just anytime for him to be visiting, though, it's Halloween. The creaky old hotel is chock ablock with carved turnips, the OG jack-o'-lanterns whose origin lies in Ireland and Scotland. If you haven't seen one, they are ineffably creepy, and the effect is truly unsettling. Fun fact: During the pandemic, I carved a turnip into one such jack-o'-lantern to see it in person. It is not only difficult to do, as root vegetables aren't soft and full of seeds like modern pumpkins, it's also eerie. Picture for proof:
Baumann, as a deeply cynical author-type who's honestly downright mean, is portrayed by Adam Scott, who's playing against character here. Instead of the usual nerdy and demure guy, he's terse, angry, alcoholic, and absolutely alone in the world.
While at the Irish hotel, he encounters malevolent employees, a locked-up honeymoon suite that's haunted by a witch, a woman gone mysteriously missing, and a local forest man who stays hopped up on magic mushroom milk. It's hard to get too into the plot without giving away the twist, so I'm trying to keep it high level.
The hotel is essentially another character in the movie, and the camera does a good job of lingering on all the dusty, spooky 1950's accoutrements: vintage clocks, distorted angel sculptures, and countless ringing bells. It's the exact opposite vibe of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, which is large and open and expensive. This hotel is quaint, small, almost claustrophobic.
Fittingly, the atmosphere that follows you from room to room is dark and foreboding, and the multiple effective jump scares are a feature, not a bug. Some horror aficionados decry the use of jump scares in elevated horror, calling them cheap or gimmicky. But the jump scares in Hokum are earned, and sometimes, you can even see them coming — and even as they slowly approach they still make you flinch. That's how good they are.
Monsters, gore, and humans don't scare me, and fortunately Hokum doesn't rely on these for its scares. Instead, it's all spirits, witches, and demons, and the production design renders them absolutely nightmarish. There's one fiend that resembles the Momo challenge hoax monster that went viral for terrifying kids about a decade ago, all bulging eyes and rictus smile. There's a scene at the end that is reminiscent of the ending of Ghost, where a character is dragged into the afterlife, and I was actually cheering for the divine justice it was bringing to life.
The most effective part, for me, of the film is how the Irish folklore organically starts to seep into Baumann's defense mechanisms. Early on, he dismisses the conjuring tales and chalk circles for protection as so much hokum, but as he descends into the lair of the witch, he absolutely starts to believe. Watching him search for his magical stick of chalk in his jacket transforms from "Maybe I'll try this!" to "I absolutely have to do this to stay alive."
When you dig deeper into the themes of the film, there's also some good (and not really didactic) lessons about forgiveness, self-compassion, and letting go, and horror can be an especially good vehicle for these. Ghosts, of course, aren't real, but the emotions that humans leave behind in the living can haunt one for decades, and a tormented spirit can be a regular person struggling with big feelings, not a poltergeist.
What sets Hokum apart from the Weapons and Smiles of the world is that it comes by its themes honestly, and allows for actual character growth. It feels human, and also lived-in in a way that makes you believe everything, despite the folklore freakout of supernatural beings.
But the scariest part of the entire movie wasn't what was on screen. It was the fact that I was in a matinee theatre all by myself for the first hour. Then, someone walks in with a huge popcorn and soda, and sits down in front of me a few rows. Within a matter of minutes, they then walked out, leaving the snacks behind. It was 100% a ghost. Or maybe it was just hokum.
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The Math
Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.
POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.
