Hokum- Mystery and Grief

I don’t know if this will stay in but I have to be honest, I am kind of struggling with what I want to say about this movie. Mostly because I am still not entirely certain how I feel about it. I liked it, thought it was decent, but was ultimately a little disappointed. I find myself simultaneously believing it could have been a lot better but also believing that it was exactly what it should have been. It is an odd situation to be in because what do you do with that?

So what did I expect? A slow burn folk horror. And what did I get? A thriller mystery with supernatural elements that lean towards folk horror. I am going to try to give the most spoiler free overview I can because I really do think people should watch it, but it’s hard to get my thoughts out without at least some knowledge of what is happening.

Adam Scott plays novelist Ohm Bauman who is struggling to finish a series he is writing. One night he feels compelled to go through the things left by his late parents and even though he has been holding onto their ashes for a while he decides it is time to finally do something with them. He goes to Ireland to stay at the hotel where they honeymooned to spread the ashes and finish his novel. While there he meets the staff of the hotel and bonds with one of them, Fiona, while being rather abrasive, to outright abusive with the others. He winds up in the hospital and when he is released he discovers that Fiona is missing and wants to do his part to help find her. This winds up with him being locked in the hotel with something.

Where I think a lot of people got confused/potentially felt betrayed is the emphasis on folk horror in all the marketing and just the general vibe of how it was presented. The folk horror is there. There is mention of a witch and Fiona even helpfully presents Ohm with a book on Irish folklore and how to deal with things like witches at one point, which he naturally rejects as a nonbeliever. The problem is when you hear folk horror you tend to expect some lore or development of the story behind the folk horror.

Most of the lore and story development that actually takes place is about Fiona’s disappearance and Ohm’s backstory. While neither are entirely independent from the witch and the folk horror element that brings, they are not quite as interconnected as I thought they would be. Instead of feeling like a mystery inside a folk horror, it felt more like a mystery with folk horror just showing up sometimes.

Even with the representation of grief and having to come to terms with it (Ohm has to escape the room and his grief) the witch plays a role in it, but it still feels disconnected. Also, the lack of further explanation of actual Irish folklore leaves some things a bit confused. For instance the weird rabbit to me was a bit, eh, because the movie doesn’t really explain that in Irish folklore rabbits are often witches. With that knowledge I still don’t know how to feel about that inclusion overall, but giving more explanations like that probably would have helped my reaction. Choosing not to further develop the folklore aspect in what is still meant to be a folk horror movie leaves the audience with missing pieces they don’t even know to look for.

And this is not bad, it’s just different than what I expected, and it can be hard sometimes to overcome expectation vs reality.

However, I see this movie getting panned by some people and I simply do not feel it disappointing enough to warrant that. Ohm’s situation is actually pretty terrifying. He has limited clues and options and also limited time to remove himself from this situation before it becomes permanent. He comes up with some interesting ideas and there are a few intense moments during the process. While I won’t say it is the movie that made me the most anxious (that “honor” will always belong to The Coffee Table) there were some legit “oh my god, hurry up” type moments for me. Not only that but some truly creepy and sometimes yes, even scary jump scares.

Ohm’s backstory is also interesting. I will say a lot of the foreshadowing and hints in this movie are a touch bit too on the obvious side, but that could also just be me. I have also written about how I don’t mind if a movie makes itself somewhat predictable as long as it’s good. And Hokum is good.

One of my problems is I feel like the movie could not decide if it wanted to be a slow burn or not. You have a lot of moments of Ohm just kind of slowly moving through various scenes doing very little. I do not mind these moments, but I am not certain that they fit with the rest of the movie. You go back and forth between quiet contemplation and slowly developing more of Ohm’s story and finding out about why he is here and what in this mystery represents his grief. Then it will switch to more focus on the mystery of what happened to Fiona and how Ohm will get himself out of his situation.

There were moments it all felt like they worked together, where you get the best of both. Some slow burn elements but still fast paced enough that you don’t risk getting bored, which slow burns can absolutely do. But other times I felt like the two different paces were competing with each other rather than flowing together.

I think this especially shows in the run time. And this is pretty spoilerish, so be warned. The movie is 107 minutes and we are about 30 minutes in when Ohm finds out Fiona is missing and over 45 in when Ohm is locked in the hotel. That leaves us less than an hour for him to find a way out of the situation while also dealing with whatever “it” is that is locked in with him. This simply does not feel like enough time or like that whole part of the movie is developed enough. But to be frank, I do not know that while maintaining the way the movie was written and played out that they could lengthen that.

So I am kind of stuck. I both want the movie to be something different while simultaneously not wanting that and thinking it is the best version of what it could be.

The story is good, again though with my finding some pacing and balancing issues. The acting is great. The characters are compelling. And while again I found a lot of it a bit obvious, it still does what it does well. I just feel like it was right on the cusp of something more, but I can’t even say how I think it could have achieved that.

I ultimately recommend it to genre fans. I just think people need to go in with a more open mind than I think a lot of us had when we did. It is not quite as advertised and hype is really a curse more than anything else. I also debated putting this off until I could watch it a second time because I think a second viewing will adjust things, though I don’t know in what direction. Maybe I’ll update this when I get around to it. Either way, I am glad I watched it but feel more in the middle of the two extremely different reactions I have seen to it. It’s not worth the hate, but it could have been more.