Horror movies come and go, mostly without much notice. It’s a genre that generally gets ignored by every major awards body. So when movies such as Hokum come along which is said to interfere with that expectation, we fans get a little bit excited, expecting and hoping that we are going to get something fresh and new. Something we can gloat about and tell our friends, ‘See, I told you horror was trendy.’ That was what I was expecting when I read all the furor around new Irish folklore tale, ‘Hokum’. Unfortunately, what was delivered was far from it.
I’m going to attempt to write this review without any spoilers, just narrative and structure insights.
Author Ohm (arsehole) Bauman is suffering from writer’s block (cliche 1), struggling to finish the last book in his ‘Conquistador’ trilogy. One evening he think he sees the ghost of his dead mother (cliche 2) and decides to go to the hotel where his parents honeymooned and leave their ashes there. It’s never explained why he didn’t do any of this before as his mother died when he was nine and his father drank himself into an early grave. Their ashes are also in the same style of pot, even though they died years apart. Hey ho.
So, Ohm (arsehole) arrives at the hotel and thi is the first time we see what an odious man Ohm (aresehole) really is. The way he speaks and treats people made me think the arsehole had just signed up for ReformUK on the basis that he gets to treat everyone that doesn’t think like him as a piece of shit. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve come across a character that i’ve instantly disliked from the off. Some might say that this is a stylistic choice and that as the story evolves Ohm (arsehole) wil be redeemed. I’d like to say that but as the film continues to it’s conclusion he doesn’t change as a person one iota.
As the movie opens we follow a man and a young boy as they walk through the desert in search of a long lost treasure (cliche 3). However the man runs out of water and appears lost (cliche 4). He holds in his hand a bottle that contains – presumably – a map of where the treasure resides. He looks around for a way to smash the bottle open but sees nothing. One has to wonder why he didn’t remove the map before he set out
? Wouldn’t that be more sensible, rather than risk his life and that of the boy? He calls the boy over and asks him to stand in front of him and not look back. The boy does as he is told turns away as the man raises the bottle above his head and just as he is about to strike the blow, we cut to Ohm (arsehole) staring at that that point in his story. We later discover (at the hotel) that Ohm (arsehole) wrote that the man strikes the bottle on boys head killing him. Great! That’s good unflinching horror. It would have been better had we seen it but hey, the kid was mutilated for a map.
Then we come to the end of the movie and (SPOILER) we return to the same scene. The man has the bottle above his head and then suddenly relaxes. He can’t do it. Instead he gives the bottle to the boy and tells him to smash it over his head and keep whatever treasure he finds for himself. The boy can’t do it either, they embrace and the movie ends. Great! Completely and utterly pointless scene. They’re both gonna die, but that’s OK because they have a cathartic moment. We are led to believe that that is also what Ohm (aresehole) experiences. Catharcism – fuck it!
The film itself is as dreary as the Irish autum that it’s set in. Dark, damp, and lifeless. The locals are disinterested and the hotel (considering it’s size and the huge party taking place) feels completely empty. Ohm (arsehole) befriends the local homeless hippie, who provides him with moonshine laced with hallucinogens from mushrooms and the local barmaid who works in the hotel. She is the only person Ohm (arsehole) shows any kind of respect to.
From the moment Ohm (arsehole) drinks the moonshine the spooky begins. The director takes us on a slow – apparently this is described as tension building and atmospheric, nowadays – journey through the narrative. The main focus being a witch who eats children and was captured many years ago in the Honeymoon Suite, which is kept under lock and key and never opened, lest she escape and wreak havoc upon the prebuscent poulation of wherever the hell the hotel is located. Again this is a trope that isn’t used so well in this narrative. Why, in this day and age, would a hotel keep their most profitable room locked based on a folktale. If it was true I’m pretty sure with the advent of social media, the place would be buzzing woth every type of supernatural nerd all vying for a peek of the withered old hag. The premise just doesn’t hold up. The place is just too big to keep open with only a smattering of guests, it’s a place that would demand 75% occupancy. They eve allude to that in the movie by stating they are holding a rowdy halloween party. You might say that I’m reading too much into it, it’s just a story, but these things matter. If the hotel was in the middle of nowhere and was the size of a small B&B it could be forgiven, but even then the unforgiving nature of social media would mean the place would still be a hotbed of ghost hunters. I’ll leave you to watch the film and judge for yourselves.
The story isn’t anything new either, we’ve been here before, countless times, and we’ve seen it all before, so why all the hoo-ha about this current glut of sub-par horror movies? One simple app – TikTok. It seems that if you can gain traction on that app, it doesn’t matter how bad the movie is, it will be a hit. It happened to E.L. James and her Fifty Shades books. Awful writer, terrible books, made her a millionaire.
Hokum uses the age old narrative trick of did Ohm (arsehole) imagine the whole thing? We are told time and time again in the movie that most of what Ohm (arsehole) drinks is laced with hallucinogens. A recent interview with the Director of Hokum states that it’s up to the audience whether Ohm (arsehole) experienced the supernatural or he was high the whole time. He says the clue is in Ohm’s (arsehole) glasses. When the audience see through Ohm’s (arsehole) glasses it can be interpreted as viewing reality.
In short the director was trying to be clever. Don’t get me wrong, horror is a great genre to experiment in and one of the pioneers of experimental horror was Alfred Hitchcock. However, Hitchcock made directorial choices that enhanced the narrative, not distratced from it. If I was having to watch for reflections in Ohm’s (arsehole) glasses throughout the whole movie to discern what was real and was a mushroom induced fever dream I’d have missed what else was going on in the scene, it’d be similar to watching subtitles whilst riding over cobblestone.
This is a new breed of YouTube director who are said to be redefining the landscape of horror. Clearly those who state this haven’t seen much of what horror has served up previosuly and as a much more palatable dish.
If you’re a horror fan, you’ll watch it because that’s what we horror fans do, we like to be challenged and we’re always looking for that next thrill, that spark in a narrative that makes us fall in love with the genre over an dover again. This just isn’t it, it isn’t redefining anything other than how to spin PR.