Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Hokum’ on VOD, Highly Effective Atmospheric Horror From Another New-ish High-Ceiling Director

Add Damian McCarthy and his new creeper Hokum (now on VOD platforms like Prime Video) to the growing pile of Relatively New Horror Filmmakers Who Sure Look Like The Next Generation of Auteurs. Jury’s still out whether McCarthy is of Zach Cregger status or in the bubbling-under category next to Osgood Perkins, but this new film and its predecessor, 2024’s memorably atmospheric Oddity, tell us the guy might have a masterpiece in him someday soon. Severance/Parks and Recreation star Adam Scott anchors this compelling haunted-hotel story, playing an irascible writer who ends up in the presence of an ancient Irish witch who wants to drag him to hell, or something. And maybe we want it to happen.

HOKUM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? The Gist: Ohm Bauman (Scott) is a bitter, angry, rude, cold jackass, and he’s the antagonist of this movie. His flaws go pretty deep. Should we empathize with him?

Unfortunately yes, at least a little bit. But it’s a challenge. He’s a famous author wrestling with how to wrap up his Conquistador trilogy, although he’s leaning toward a harsh ending that might get a nod of approval from a different McCarthy, Cormac. “They were doomed,” he types, then takes a sip of whiskey. He saws the lock off an old wooden box and touches the old pistol in it.

He glances at the urns containing his parents’ ashes. He picks up an old photo of his mother (Mallory Adams) and looks wistfully at it. We also get a quick shot of his mother’s ghost standing over his shoulder. All this adds up to a tragic story that explains why he’s a total dick.

But it’s not an excuse. The guy’s still a dick. The photo was taken near the Bilberry Woods Hotel in Ireland, where Ohm’s parents had their honeymoon. He travels there, taking one of those Horror Movie Long Winding Roads that inevitably lead to a place far from civilization and therefore ripe for malevolent and/or supernatural shenanigans.

The hotel is staffed by light eccentrics: The owner, Cob (Brendan Conroy), is introduced telling a ghost story that scares the bejeezus out of two little boys. Mal (Peter Coonan) is the manager, Cob’s son-in-law. Fergal (Michael Patric) is the gruff groundskeeper who puts crossbow bolts in goats when they climb on top of cars. Alby (Will O’Connell) is the bellhop, a fan of Ohm’s novels who wants the famous writer to read his amateur manuscript.

And the bartender is Fiona (Florence Ordesh), who bristles at Ohm but might eventually understand his pain a little more than most. Oh, and we can’t forget Jerry (David Wilmot), who lives in a van in the forest and spices his goat’s milk with psychedelic mushrooms. Ohm is an ass to all these people, each of whom would be justified in socking him in the nose. Fiona points Ohm toward the tree where his mother’s photo was taken.

There, he delicately spreads his mother’s ashes, but unceremoniously dumps his father in a dusty heap, a scene that Tells Us Things. His parents stayed in the Bilberry’s honeymoon suite, but that’s a no-go these days. It’s haunted, see. By a witch.

The door to the suite’s dedicated elevator sits behind a locked metal gate of a type you might see in Alcatraz. Now, it’s OK to be a skeptic, healthy even.

But it’s the cynical skeptics like Ohm who huff dismissively that stories of witches in haunted hotels as [INSERT TITLE OF MOVIE HERE]. Of course, it’s the cynical skeptics who inevitably find themselves at ground zero for some disturbing shit, the likes of which will possibly fatally f— with them. And even though Ohm deserves to be f—ed with, I’m not so sure it deserves to be fatal. What Movies Will It Remind You Of?

Put a writer in a haunted hotel and you immediately think of The Shining, assuming you’re hopelessly film-pilled. Put a skeptic in a haunted hotel room, and you’ve got the extraordinary second episode of Widow’s Bay. Otherwise, McCarthy’s latest should be lumped in with a smarter-than-average group of recent scary flicks ranging from Undertone to Bring Her Back and Heretic, and maybe even the very best of the bunch in Weapons. Performance Worth Watching: Kudos to Scott for leaning into Ohm’s dickishness without apology, choosing to maintain a chilly demeanor with vulnerabilities in the subtext.

And Wilmot is effective at delivering some understated comic relief. Sex And Skin: Nobody’s doing a damn thing on that bed in that honeymoon suite. Our Take: Hokum has all the elements of the usual stultifying walk… slowly… through… the house… and… reach… for… a doorknob movie, but no use for the “stultifying” part. I nearly stood up and cheered when Ohm, navigating a series of dank basement corridors, actually finds a light switch and turns it on.

Note to filmmakers: Characters can conform to logic and the movie can still be scary and provocative. Crazy to consider, I know, but it’s true. McCarthy’s direction is mannered and assured, creating atmosphere with shrewdly conceived lighting within well-designed spaces. He never relies on gimmickry or tricks, and his deployment of jump scares is potent without feeling cheap and manipulative.

He uses clever physical/conceptual storytelling devices to great effect, e.g., a dumbwaiter that slowly descends from the haunted suite down to what one might interpret as Hell Itself, or the notion that psychedelics open the mind to seeing ghosts. Like Oddity, Hokum features enough subtle differentiations on familiar horror tropes to elevate it above the pack. One gets the sense that McCarthy, working from his own screenplay, starts with the scary stuff and then leavens it with thematics, in this case, a fairly straightforward portrait of trauma warping Ohm into a detestable, but not necessarily hopeless, person – and the film wisely avoids becoming a big dumb quasi-metaphorical therapy session. This is also the rare horror movie featuring remarkably few on-screen kills.

Gore mavens will cry foul, but this is a classic case of what’s in your head being scarier than what’s in your face, even when what’s in your face is the type of imagery that might inspire second thoughts when you reach for the lightswitch at bedtime. Our Call: Ho hum – another day, another excellent horror film from a burgeoning talent. STREAM IT. John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Werner Herzog hugged him once.