Movie Review: Hokum

Guilt, grief, and ghosts collide

When I first saw the trailer for Hokum, I was instantly hooked. I was expecting to get a nice little slice of Irish folk horror, and while that is part of what I got, there was a whole lot more to this movie than meets the eye.

I am going to try and do this as spoiler free as possible, as I think this is a movie that you should go into blind. The basic premise is that we have a popular author heading to Ireland to scatter the ashes of his parents. They had gone there on their honeymoon, so Ohm Bauman, the main character, decides that is the place to stay during his visit.

The hotel feels off from the start, mostly due to the strange cast of characters who run the place. The only one who seems decent is Fiona, who quickly becomes the main cog in the Hokum wheel. After surviving a suicide attempt, Ohm goes back to the hotel to retrieve his things and to thank Fiona. When he gets there, he discovers that she has been missing for quite some time, which then steers the movie into murder mystery territory, with some truly eerie and haunting moments throughout.

Hokum relies heavily on atmosphere and tension, never really diving too deeply into jump scare territory, and it is all the better for taking that approach. Ohm’s past, and his feelings of guilt, begin to surface, often through dream sequences and flashbacks that are where the real horror in this movie resides.

While this was sold as a ghost story, it is more about the human condition and how we carry that guilt before finding a way to unburden ourselves of it. In truth, you never know what is real and what is not, for reasons explained later in the movie, and it will leave you thinking, for sure.

Director Damian McCarthy has delivered another hit, as I also loved Oddity, which has that same sense of slow burn underlying terror running through it. I would also say that I think you all might seem some nods to The Shining and Room 237 in this one. It feels more like an homage than a straight rip-off.

I was in the perfect mode for this one, so it gets a perfect score from me.

5 Stars out of 5