Damian McCarthy’s Hokum

Ohm Bauman is a lot like Stephen King. He is a horror writer, who is a real jerk. It doesn’t take long to figure that out, especially if you are one of the employees of the Bilberry Woods Hotel, who he treats like dirt while checking it. However, there are good reasons for his bitterness. Perhaps fittingly, Bauman warms to the bartender Fiona, but the witch allegedly haunting the property will be a different matter in director-screenwriter Damian McCarthy’s Hokum, which releases this Tuesday on DVD.

Bauman is struggling with the ending to his “Conquistador” novel and with life in general, so he makes a reservation at the quaint Irish country inn where his late parents honeymooned. Sadly, his mother died during Bauman’s childhood and her death turned his father mean. He is hoping for some sort of catharsis. Of course, the stories of the Cailleach Witch do not impress him, even though it is somewhat ironic she was supposedly trapped in the honeymoon suite where his parents maybe once stayed.

Initially, Bauman had no interest in visiting the haunted suite. However, a surprise twist McCarthy springs on viewers within the first twenty-five minutes supplies solid motivation for the writer to investigate the locked and chained room.

Indeed, Bauman is in for a rough time of things. Yet, what his experiences reveal will humanize him for the audience quite considerably. McCarthy has some serious supernatural scares up his sleeve, but the added human complications make them scarier.

Regardless, as Bauman, Adam Scott convincingly looks like McCarthy fed him through a wringer. He expresses terror, desperation, and alienation about as well anyone in recent horror films. He is also amusingly caustic during Bauman’s abrasive before-the-fall scenes.

Florence Ordesh has a few nice scenes as Fiona, but the two real stars of Hokum would undeniably be Scott and the massively creepy Hotel. Production designer Til Frohlich, art director Evgenia Silvina, and set decorator Clara McKenna invest the Bilberry Woods with an extraordinarily sinister sense of place.

There is a lot of irony in McCarthy’s screenplay. Yet, there is also a good deal of humanity and redemption. In fact, that is what really sets this haunted hotel story apart from the competition. Very highly recommended for horror fans, Hokum releases this Tuesday (8/11) on DVD and BluRay.