It’s the world premiere of the Adam Scott starrer Hokum at SXSW and the house is packed to the gills with seasoned moviegoers. We’re in Austin, Texas, a city that reveres film like few others, and it’s clear this crowd knows its horror flicks. Yet there’s a giddy buzz in the room, no doubt fueled by the trailer’s release two days prior. Is it going to happen? the collective vibe seems to ask. Is Damian McCarthy really going to scare us?
The screening starts, and we don’t get through the first act before it begins. Gasps. Shrieks. The aftershocks of laughter, releasing a bit of the tension and acknowledging that he’s done it, he got us. This film is gonna freak us out.
Since 2008, Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy has been honing his craft with a series of singularly effective short films, followed by his features Caveat (2020) and Oddity (2024, winner of the FANGORIA Chainsaw Award for Best International Movie). Many hallmarks of McCarthy’s craft are on display in Hokum. The filmmaker excels at planting the idea that you’re going to see something terrifying, then lets the fear simmer as beat by beat he raises the heat to the boiling point. Our mind's eye is seeded with figures from local folklore: a witch who abducts and imprisons children in the underworld. The main setting — a traditional Irish inn — is festooned with figurines of children with oversized eyes and expressions divided between abject terror and cherubic malice. McCarthy tempts his characters to open a forbidden door or reach into a foreboding hole in the wall – and they do. At its heart, though, Hokum is a murder mystery. (To be clear, not the kind you’ll see on PBS.)
Adam Scott is Ohm Bauman, a popular American author on a sojourn in Ireland, trying to find some sense of closure over his difficult relationship with his late parents. Bauman is an irascible sumbitch, downright rude to the staff of the Bilberry Inn where he’s staying, and where his parents stayed on their honeymoon decades prior. It would be easy to write Bauman off as a misanthrope, but there are signs of a beating heart under the scabrous exterior: he criticizes the killing of animals simply because they’re deemed nuisances; and he calls out an old innkeeper for regaling (read: frightening) a pair of young boys with the tale of the witch.
The inn is populated with quirky locals. There’s Alby (Will O'Connell), a bellhop and wannabe author, who Bauman takes pains to remind that he is, indeed, just a bellhop. Kind-spirited Fiona (Florence Ordesh) is the inn’s bartender, who finds Bauman tolerable, even companionable, despite his churlish demeanor. And there's Jerry (David Wilmot), the town pariah and alleged criminal who lives in the woods behind the Bilberry. Bauman seems a devout skeptic, but for the locals, the echoes of folklore and even encounters with apparitions are an accepted part of life. Bauman isn’t ready to acknowledge that the possibility of ghosts means the possibility of some sort of reconciliation with his past. As Jerry tells him, “You do know these things exist. It’s just closed minds can’t see them.”
When one of his new acquaintances goes missing, Bauman finds himself drawn into the search, and drawn deeper into the inn’s murky history, and the terrifying depths of its interior.
The sets are authentic and often gothic, in particular those revolving around the inn’s one shuttered room, locked in the stasis of a bygone era, dust suspended in the air, gloomy outdated lighting fixtures, and furnished with ornate mechanical clocks and other antique store artifacts. Colm Hogan’s cinematography and Til Frohlich’s production design on these claustrophobic interiors are especially effective. And Steve Fanagan’s sound design doesn’t just accentuate the visuals, it serves as a band for storytelling. Pay close attention: I suspect it reveals why the writer/director named his protagonist Ohm.
The trajectory established with Caveat and Oddity sets a high bar for Damian McCarthy’s third film, and Hokum hits the mark. See it in a theater when it opens on May 1 for an optimal experience — and grab your chalk, you’ll need it.
