After watching the superb Gothic horror film Hokum, I walked into the blood-red-drenched men’s room at the McHurley Film Center and more fully appreciated the décor’s direct reference to The Shining. That was a good sign, an indication that Damian McCarthy’s latest film registers on an impact level vaguely in the neighborhood of Kubrick’s masterpiece.
That’s not to say that Hokum rises quite to Kubrick’s apex, but the new film is a fine entry in the subgenre of horror films set in an old hotel, where things go seriously bump — and worse — in the night and day.
Our hapless protagonist in the unsettling tale is a frustrated writer, Ohm Bauman (like the unraveling Jack “here’s Johnny!” Nicholson character in The Shining: I’m telling you, writer’s block is a bitch!). As some consolation, there is light at the end of the creative tunnel, in the form of an epilogue, for both the film and its characters’ agonized-over book finale.
Adam Scott is well-cast and fully in his snarky, grumpy element as Bauman, who lashes out at the hotel employee Alby (Will O’Connell), who is a fan and an aspiring writer himself, demoralized by the famed writer’s calloused response to Alby’s attempt at seeking validation. After attacking the poor fellow, Ohm grumbles, “Never meet your heroes.” But there, oh, will be comeuppance.
Horror of both comfortingly formulaic and novel sorts awaits in this rickety old hotel, where Bauman has traveled to scatter his parents’ ashes at the site of their honeymoon. The honeymoon angle in the story becomes ground zero for a tangled narrative involving the nefarious doings of the hotel bartender Fiona (Florence Ordesh) and Mal (Peter Coonan), the desk clerk with a secret or two. Circling the central plot are colorful peripheral characters such as the mushroom-hunting (and ingesting) drifter Jerry (David Wilmot), who will make his way from the outskirts of the story to a key plot turn.
Irish filmmaker McCarthy is carving out a special niche for himself in the thinking person’s horror film domain, with Hokum solidifying — and rising above — his previous genre entries, Oddity and Caveat. In his latest venture, we have the requisite elements in place — selective sacrificial moments, soggy and gothic atmospherics, apparitional characters not subject to the rules of mortal conduct, and, in Joseph Bishara’s musical score, a creepily lurking source of mounting tension.
But there are also undercurrents of festering psychological tensions, as well, as the full story of Ohm’s past is ever-so slowly revealed. Don’t meet your heroes. It all adds up to a chilling and chiseled cinematic ghost story. Hokum is horror flick hokum, it’s true, but with a savvy and self-aware tang attached. Men: Be sure to stop by the McHurley water closet on your way out, for added post-screening buzz of recognition.
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