Owing maybe extra debt to Stephen King’s The Shining than Kubrick’s, Hokum fixates on a deeply troubled novelist who imbibes an excessive amount of Scotch and bourbon. So impolite is Scott’s Bauman when he’s in his cups that it’s a surprise the lodge workers can put up with him for a day—fortunately Florence Odesh’s Fiona reveals sufficient kindness to him that she saves him from a very unhealthy night time earlier than All Hallow’s Eve (or Samhain because the Celts would’ve referred to as it in pagan instances).
So when Fiona goes lacking from the lodge—and after confiding in Bauman that she at all times was curious to poke across the allegedly witched honeymoon suite—sympathy will get the higher of knowledge as the yankee likewise finds himself going into the personal chamber. Even when lit with what may be hundred-year-old electrical gentle, the gloom of the place is nothing wanting oppressive. It’s an area stuffed with unhealthy goals and worse waking hours.
The pleasures in Hokum emanate from its pulp. There are moments of fantastically atmospheric dread whereby a soaked and deserted Scott hides behind a Victorian mattress curtain whereas the countenance of a creature hovers outdoors. Just like Oddity’s use of the creepiest model to ever crawl out of Hell’s division retailer, it’s the belabored photographs of eerily smiling cherubic statues on the the bridal suite’s clock, or of Edwardian collectible figurines the lodge proprietor makes use of to frighten young children within the foyer, whereby Hokum earns its chunk.
Much less profitable are the ever-present soar scares, which whereas generally efficient, are sometimes telegraphed and used liberally to a fault. The subtextual thesis of the movie additionally about how even an artist’s ache may be damaging to the artwork feels at instances a wee contrived; a fig-leaf to the fashionable expectations for “severe” horror cinema.
To make certain, Hokum is critically good, however largely when it embraces its fairy story qualities about darkish forgotten corners of the woods the place spirits search to nonetheless carry off the un-careful baby of God to heathen ends. The movie seeks to discover a gentle outdoors of the misanthropic bleakness which might bedevil even rolling hills of beatific inexperienced. However, actually, we’re all right here to benefit from the darkish, which in McCarthy and cinematographer Colm Hogan’s compositions, is invitingly nihilistic.
Hokum premiered at SXSW on March 14. NEON releases Hokum in vast launch on Could 1.
