3 min readMay 15, 2026 03:50 PM IST
Hokum movie review: The most ghastly thing about this horror film is how casually Ohm (Adam Scott) heats a spoon to scald the hand of a bellboy, who is seeking too much of his attention.
As you are still trying to get over the casualness of that cruelty, Hokum mounts one so-called scare after another without ever reaching the audacity of that moment.
And that’s not the only time. This dark film – in story, and particularly in treatment – gets almost everything wrong when it comes to pacing, neither giving its actors any room, nor letting its characters grow into people. Words like conquistadors, witches, haunted, dark woods are thrown about, and strange sounds keep echoing through day and night, in inter-connected, disjointed ways.
The entire film should, ideally, be one episode in a limited TV series, which before and after its events would flesh out the story of this creaky hotel in remote Ireland that is holding a Halloween night before it closes for the winter, and of its most prized guest, Ohm, and its downright secretive staff.
If Scott of Severance fame, carrying on that same ironic, dead-pan energy, boldly ventures into creepy corners with a stoicism that befits his role, the hotel staffers are effectively impressive in even their small appearances. Peter Coonan is Mal, the hotel owner’s son-in-law who operates the front desk, Michael Patric is the owner’s bossy son, O’Connell is the suffering bellboy, and Wilmot is the local vagabond. The one who leaves the biggest mark is Ordesh, who plays Fiona, the kind bartender who lends an ear to anyone with a story to share.
Ohm is an American writer of some fame, who is struggling with an ending for a well-received trilogy, which is pretty bleak as it stands now. He has been seeing things and hearing sounds as he labours through it, and that is one of the reasons Ohm decides to head to the Ireland hotel where his dead parents spent their honeymoon, and where he knew they were happy together.
The trepidation that seems to be trailing Ohm carries over to the hotel, where his first encounters are a dead wild goat, shot down for climbing onto guest cars, and the hotel owner, who is telling a story about a witch to two scared children.
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The mood having been set, Hokum struggles to proceed, and then launches headlong into a “forbidden” room. It spends the rest of the film within its dour, dank confines, and a dumbwaiter that it is mildly obsessed with, doing itself no favours.
Hokum? You can say that again.
Hokum movie director: Damian McCarthy
Hokum movie cast: Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Florence Ordesh, Michael Patric, Will O’Connell
Hokum movie rating: 1 star
