Adam Scott in Hokum.Elevation Pictures
Hokum
Written and directed by Damian McCarthy
Starring Adam Scott, Peter Coonan and Florence Ordesh
Classification 14A; 107 minutes
Opens in theatres May 1
With a tongue-in-cheek title inviting audiences to immediately dismiss its supposedly intense fear factor, Damian McCarthy’s new horror film arrives ready to play with convention and expectation. The scary thing, though, is that the movie exhausts itself halfway through, revealing Hokum as something closer to hogwash.
Things start off promisingly, with McCarthy throwing his audience into a barren desert in which a nameless conquistador travels alongside a sullen boy. Matters are dire for the starving, parched pair – but before we get too invested in their plight, the film flips a switch to reveal that the characters exist only in the imagination of a successful American author named Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott), who is struggling to figure out the ending to his latest sure-to-be-smash-hit novel while on a quasi-vacation in rural Ireland.
Trading the sands of nowhere for the mossy, near-mystic woods of the Irish backcountry, Ohm is visiting the same rural resort where his parents spent their honeymoon so many decades ago. The horrific surprises in store for Ohm at this rather dire-looking destination – complete with a staff pulled from Dante’s version of Fawlty Towers – will be revealed in due time. Too soon, in fact, because after a short detour into Ohm’s distressing personal life, the film settles into a haunted-house groove whose contours remain rather flat. Not to mention frustratingly absurd, given there is one moment in which a simple fist to a window pane would have solved almost all of Ohm’s problems.
McCarthy and Scott (best known today for Apple TV’s Severance, but who will remain in my heart as Party Down’s intensely sarcastic sad sack) gets points for making Ohm one of the most intentionally unlikeable protagonists in recent horror-movie history. So much so that even after Ohm’s unique set of personal demons are revealed, you still kind of root for the supernatural evil to take him down. Which is mostly McCarthy’s point as Hokum wades deeper and deeper into its own shallow weeds – the scariest of monsters have nothing on the misdeeds of man.
But that not terribly original bit of truth-telling can only bring so much verve to what is ultimately a marathon of jump scares. Don’t worry, though. You won’t run out of breath, only patience.
Scott in Hokum.Elevation Pictures