Review: HOKUM

A prologue features a conquistador and a small boy seeking something in a vast desert. This leads to a moment of desperation where the conquistador is driven to extreme violence. Through intercutting we learn that this is happening in the mind of an author trying to finish a trilogy of novels. He's liberally sipping whiskey and trembling from too many years of doing that. A noise in the house distracts him and he sees a figure in the darkness of a stairwell that vanishes with light directed at it. It reminds him to care for the ashes of his parents.

So, it's off to Ireland where they honymooned and the hotel where they stayed. The near petrified owner, Cobb, interrupted in quietly scaring two children with the story of the witch that haunts the place lets the skepitcal American writer, Ohm Bauman, that he's in for the reverse of fun and games. Which ensue.

Damian McCarthy's third feature packs a fair bit of his previous two but this time minus the quirk-forward approach. If I call this his most mainstream film so far I only really mean that it was made for the kind of distribution it has won, chain cinemas instead of festival venues and specialist streamers. That this $5 million movie has so far made five times that sounds like a winning gamble. 

If that sounds like I'm calling sellout, I should also point out that Hokum is a far richer cinematic experience than any genre film made for the many times its budget. We are witnessing the rise of a generation of new filmmakers who cut their teeth on YouTube and emerge with first features that play like veteran cinema. McCarthy's films don't ;ook like theirs . he's much more along the lines of the artsy indy crew of Peter Strickland and Joanna Hogg with a clear lean toward horror. Hokum looks and sounds like lush budgeted Stephen King adaptation but with an art house sensibility, as though James Wan ditched the jump scares and went broody.

If casting Adam Scott was a cynical use of a well known and beloved American leader it's also astute as he plays the hell out of his character without a second's stylistic frisson between him and the rest of the cast. He works. He works against and with the quirk, acquites himself in action sequences and carries the developing horror with his character's melancholy.

I'll mention the score here as it really stands up. A sequence that starts with a fire alarm progresses to the manipulation of that portamento tone until it is a musical motif. I normally notice such a thing as it's happening. The combination of action and scene changes obscured this shift until it had been playing that way for minutes.

So, the rising director who seemed destined for the eternal arthouse broke through. Unlike Gareth Edwards whose strong and resourceful Monster led him to the popcorn epic Godzilla or Rob Savage whose canny COVID horror Host brought forth the deflation of The Boogeyman, McCarthy at least has stepped into the mainstream with something that still looks like his own work. While my tastes still prefer his middle feature Oddity, despite all about it that doesn't quite work, this is the one I'd choose to introduce him to someone unfamiliar. If he can make the good bits of his approach the things that make him a living, he'll join Coralie Fargeat and Jordan Peele in the stronger corner of the mainstream. Perhaps he needs to keep to his native Ireland to keep that sweet. I'd be in the queue for that.