Spoilers ahead! This article discusses some plot points from Hokum, currently in theaters.
When Damian McCarthy tells me that he doesn’t believe in ghosts, I’m not sure what to make of it. In a day and age where it can feel like everyone is trying to scare us, McCarthy is one of the best filmmakers at doing just that. Following his well-received supernatural thriller Caveat in 2020 and his upcoming breakout film Oddity, McCarthy's latest creepy chiller Hokum is bound to be one of the most talked-about horror movies of 2023.
In Hokum, McCarthy takes audiences to Ireland's Bilberry Woods Hotel with American novelist Ohm Baumann (Adam Scott) for an old-fashioned ghost story experience. After spending years working on the last book in his bestselling Conquistador series, Ohm travels to Ireland to spread his parent's ashes near the honeymoon spot where they were once happy. However, when he arrives at the Bilberry Woods Hotel, Ohm finds that the owner, Mr. Cob (Brendan Conroy), is scaring two young boys into believing he is keeping a witch locked up inside the honeymoon suite after he sealed it off.
"The thing I find really unsettling about the witches is the sheer power they wield and their sense of authority," comments McCarthy on his chosen entity. "The motive behind their actions is really ambiguous. Monsters such as vampires or werewolves have very clear motives—they either seek destruction or blood or whatever else the case may be. In the same way, there isn't really much we know about what witches intend."
While Ohm ridicules Cob's story, it is evident that the young man is fighting against some really wicked internal demons. The root of his unprocessed trauma becomes apparent later in the night as he opens up to Fiona (Florence Ordesh), the bartender of the Bilberry Woods bar, about his past. When Ohm was a mere child aged nine, his cherished mother was brutally murdered, leading his father to become an abusive drunkard who ended up dying prematurely due to his addiction. However, towards the latter part of the movie, it is revealed that Ohm was the one who unintentionally shot his mother dead while playing around with his father's pistol.
Terror time
In the rest of his first evening at the hotel, Ohm engages in drinking and berating the hotel staff (activities he appears to enjoy far too much). Before heading upstairs and attempting suicide, he's saved from death by Fiona, who, although irritated by Ohm's attitude, feels strongly enough about the situation to check on him once she realizes something is wrong. Some weeks later, when he visits the hotel again only to discover Fiona hasn't been seen around since the Halloween bash held the day after his suicide attempt, it falls upon him to repay the favor. As part of his efforts to locate Fiona, he ends up spending a frightening night alone in the honeymoon suite and confronting some psychological issues.
"In that first act, I'm hoping the audience will be saying, 'I really hope this guy gets punished, I really hope he gets everything that he deserves,' because he's quite a cruel character and very standoffish with everyone. But once they start to get to know him and learn more about him and why he acts the way he does, I hope they'll say, 'There's more to him than being this arrogant, successful writer who thinks he's better than everybody else; maybe I want to see him escape this situation.'"
Together with Jerry (David Wilmot), another vagrant and a friend of Fiona's, whose ghost revealed to him that Fiona was stuck in the hotel after having informed him of the same during his state of inebriation caused by the consumption of magic mushroom powder mixed with goat's milk, Ohm learns the truth behind Fiona's kidnapping: That she had been drugged and taken upstairs to the honeymoon suite before being sent down to the sealed off basement of the hotel by means of a dumbwaiter in which she met an agonizing death. Mal (Peter Coonan), who worked at the hotel and is Mr. Cob's son-in-law, and had an affair with Fiona before impregnating her, was responsible for this act.
McCarthy's three movies have focused on some level on the pursuit of justice for the murder of a woman committed by a man in their lives, a theme that he keeps returning to due to its disturbing nature in reality. "I don't come from any personal experience with it, but there's always been something about violence toward women that just really hit me in the gut. It's just the most awful thing, so when I'm trying to think of the most awful person imaginable, it's always going to be these cowardly disgusting men and not something slick or cool about them at all."
But is it all hokum?
Ohm will face many challenges on his way home, but Mal isn't the only villain trying to hinder his path through the night. After confronting all manner of terrifying entities, Ohm has to deal with Mr. Cob's witch, who would be delighted to have him in her dungeons. Fortunately, she succeeds in capturing only Mal, with Ohm evading her in two ways – first, with the use of a folklore trick taught to him by Fiona and then by freeing himself from both the physical and metaphorical shackles with the help of his mother's ghost. However, the fires Ohm set up to burn the witch down claim their victims. As a result, the only things found when the authorities search the place are the bodies of Fiona and Jerry, whom Mal killed as well.
When Ohm is recovering in a hospital, he visits from Alby (Will O'Connell) who Ohm treated quite cruelly during the time they spent together in the hotel. Apologetically, the bellboy informs him that he put a large portion of Jerry's magic mushroom powder into the whiskey he drank on the night of his stay in the honeymoon suite. Was everything that happened just a hallucination or did the mushrooms only open Ohm's eyes to reality? As McCarthy said, "I like the idea that some of it is open to interpretation and there is a discussion to be had." He went on, saying: "For me, it's pretty clear which parts of it are absolutely a trip and which aren't."
According to McCarthy, the secret to distinguishing fact from fiction revolves around Ohm's glasses. "When you see something through his point-of-view, then the camera cuts around and shows his reverse shot, then all you have to do is look in his glasses and see what he sees," he says. "It's the key to it all."
On the new Conquistador ending that Ohm pens following this nightmare experience, McCarthy clarifies that it came about after considering the need for catharsis. "The Ohm character is pretty introverted, and he rarely talks to anyone," he says. "This would be the time to show that something is different inside of him. He's now got a product ready to go out into the world, and he realizes there's no reason why he shouldn't make it a little more optimistic."
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