Guilt Books a Suite in Damian McCarthy’s Atmospheric Irish Folk Horror ‘HOKUM’

There’s a witch in the honeymoon suite – or so the local legends say – in Damian McCarthy’s folk horror movie Hokum, but that might end up being the least of writer Ohm Bauman’s problems. The supernatural chiller, which debuted at this year’s SXSW and is being distributed by Neon, follows the crabby and hermetic Bauman (Adam Scott in his first horror movie appearance) as he embarks on a quest to visit the hotel in Ireland where his now-deceased parents honeymooned so many years ago. As far as he knows, it was the last place they were truly happy, so he’s brought their remains along to scatter, all while trying to finalize the epilogue of his popular Conquistador book trilogy. His heavy drinking only leads to further spiraling, and when the hotel barmaid, Fiona (Florence Ordesh), who pulled him back from the end of his rope winds up missing, he teams up with local wood dweller Jerry (David Wilmot) to solve the mystery of her disappearance.

McCarthy, whose previous feature Oddity explored similarly eerie Irish folkloric territory, leans on many of the same tools and storytelling tropes to bring Hokum to life. He’s all about putting the scary things right in the frame rather than drawing out the weight of them. What Hokum has going for it that allows it to exceed Oddity in some capacities is the performances. Not all of the leading roles in McCarthy’s debut were convincingly performed, but here he’s assembled a solid cast that more than carries its weight. That’s not to say he’s proving himself to be some kind of expert actor’s director; quite frankly, that’s an area he still somewhat struggles in. But everyone here is effective, and Wilmot is something more than that. His Jerry is the movie’s MVP, weird and a little feral but ultimately the most recognizably human presence in the film.

Scott tends to be a performer who can be pigeonholed as somewhat one-note, whether it’s his monotonous voice or his fairly flat affectation. There’s not a ton of range to his characters, and that can sometimes flatten the emotionality of a performance. Where that works well for a role like his in Severance, in which there’s not a lot of texture to the character on the page, it often feels limiting for the type of performer he is. Here, he’s playing a sanctimonious asshole, someone suffering from a nauseating mix of egoism and self-hatred. It’s as if his mission is to turn people off and push them away, as evidenced by his prickly interactions with just about everyone in the film. As what he’s struggling with comes into focus and we realize the origin of his wounds, he grows some edges and groundedness as a character, and Scott delivers. Is it going to enter the pantheon of career-best horror performances? Probably not. But it’s doing enough.

[READ MORE: Our review of ‘Oddity‘ directed by Damian McCarthy and starring Carolyn Bracken]

If Hokum has anything on its mind beyond a good scare, it’s guilt – the avoiding of it, the self-flagellation that fills the space where accountability should be. It’s the current running under Bauman’s drinking and Jerry’s feralness alike, and it’s what ultimately binds the two of them together in trying to save Fiona. Their rescue mission plays less like heroism than like two men trying to outrun their own reflections. It’s a solid thematic spine, even if McCarthy doesn’t always press on it as hard as he could.

Where the film gets shakier is in the mechanics of its folklore. There’s a witch, sure, and she does what witches tend to do in these movies but Hokum never really articulates why, or what rules she plays by. At times, the movie reaches for something about how men weaponize the supernatural against women but the threads never quite braid together. The witch, the sacrifice, the guilt-ridden rescuers all occupy the same hotel without really speaking to each other, and the result is a story that lands most of its individual beats without cohering into some grander thing.

McCarthy does compensate with real craft. The hotel and its basement are where most of the film lives, and he uses the geography of the place beautifully, letting us learn the corridors and stairwells until every doorway carries weight. The sound design is sharp, the pacing assured. The scares themselves are a mixed bag; the jump scares don’t do much, but McCarthy is a genuine talent when he sets something up and lets it breathe – a witch approaching the camera in no particular hurry, a figure lurking toward someone who hasn’t noticed yet. Those slow-burn compositions are where Hokum earns its dread. They are also quite familiar within the genre.

Any horror film is really judged by how it makes you feel, and for most of its runtime Hokum maintains a low hum of disquiet that occasionally spikes into something genuinely scary. I’m not convinced it’s going to terrify anyone well-versed in the genre’s grammar; the beats are too familiar, the shape of the thing too recognizable. But on pure craft, McCarthy has made something worth the price of admission. Hokum is atmospheric, confidently staged, and genuinely unsettling in stretches. For a movie called Hokum, though, it’s awfully reverent toward the genre’s oldest and most familiar tricks.

CONCLUSION: Damian McCarthy returns to Irish folk horror for Hokum, recruiting Adam Scott for his first proper venture into the genre to tell a somewhat predictable little witches-and-ghosts tale that’s rich with atmosphere and short on novelty — ironic for a horror movie about an author.

B-

For more reviews, interviews, and featured articles, be sure to:

Follow Silver Screen Riot on Letterboxd
Follow Silver Screen Riot on Facebook 
Follow Silver Screen Riot on Twitter
Follow Silver Screen Riot on BlueSky
Follow Silver Screen Riot on Substack