Hokum: A Delectable Pocket Shining (review)
An American writer packs his bags in an Irish hotel to face his demons – literally. A success signed by the new master of Irish horror Damian McCarthy.
Damian McCarthy’s first two films, Caveat and Oddity, established the young Irishman as a rising star in horror. A filmmaker with already well-identified obsessions, which combine a maniacal passion for unusual and threatening objects, with a pronounced taste for closed doors, dark interiors and claustrophobic architecture.
His topographical talent and his passions as a weird second-hand dealer blossom superbly in Hokum, a haunted hotel film which embraces his “Stephen-Kingian” pedigree. The hero of the film is an American writer named Ohm, who checks into an Irish hotel, where his deceased parents spent their honeymoon years before, and in the vicinity of which he intends to scatter their ashes. The novelist has alcohol and blank page problems, but he has the head of Adam Scott, not Jack Nicholson – the Shining-style score will therefore be played in a less grandiloquent tone than in Kubrick’s. Our Ohm will above all have to confront local folklore, by choosing to enter a room which is nevertheless forbidden to visitors…
McCarthy takes a contagious pleasure in crisscrossing the space of his supernatural hotel, in mischievously sketching very creepy silhouettes (the director who terrorizes the children, the obsequious bellboy, the old hermit wandering in the woods…), in filming a string of kitsch trinkets with an uneasy insistence, in short, in exploiting the potential of the place, from the reception bell to a memorable use of the freight elevator. We could criticize him for being a little heavy-handed when concluding his fable and emphasizing its symbolic dimension. The wandering around Hokum is perhaps a little too signposted, it’s true. But the decor is insane.
By Damian McCarthy. With Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot… Duration: 1h41. Released April 29, 2026
