Although Damian McCarthy’s third film, Hokum, doesn’t start out in Ireland (nor does the first hair-raising scene begin there), it isn’t until his complex protagonist, Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott), arrives in said country that things get especially eerie. Perhaps only as folk horror set in Ireland can (see also: The Hole in the Ground and McCarthy’s second feature, Oddity).
Bauman, a successful novelist (this being the element of Hokum that one has to suspend their disbelief about the most), has just finished writing the ending to his bestselling Conquistador series, but is sidelined after seeing the ghost of his mother in the midst of crafting a bleak conclusion to the story. One that involves filicide. And yes, later on, Ohm choosing this particular conclusion will make more sense in terms of him wanting to self-flagellate for his sins the best way he knows how—by using his child character as a stand-in for himself, and what he thinks he deserves. But before the viewer is made privy to why that ending is calling to him so much, they’re met with Ohm’s journey to a “quaint” hotel in “rural” Ireland. Both of those keywords obviously being euphemisms for “get the fuck out of there.”
Alas, Ohm will find that once he checks in to The Bilberry Woods Hotel, he’s going to find it difficult to “conclude his stay.” And it’s hardly because of the “friendly” staff. Which consists of three primary people: Mal (Peter Coonan), the front desk “concierge,” Fiona (Florence Ordesh), the bartender, and Alby (Will O’Connell), the bellhop. It’s Fiona that Ohm takes a shine to while sitting at the bar one night, drinking himself “silly.” Only Ohm, rather than getting silly as a drunk, becomes more hostile and more jaded, taking his aggressions out on Alby, who professes to not only be a fan of Ohm’s work, but to also be a writer himself. Ohm balks at that declaration, pointing out that the bellhop uniform begs to differ with the false reality that Alby is “telling himself.” Also cruelly informing him that if he’s not paid for his writing, then he’s not a writer. To add insult to injury, Ohm burns Alby’s hand with a hot metal spoon, insisting he’ll need thicker skin if he wants to be a writer.
Fiona, having observed all of this, is still kind enough to show concern when she goes up to his room to return his tape recorder and the photograph of his mother next to a tree in the woods nearby (indeed, the only reason Ohm showed up to this godforsaken hotel is because his parents honeymooned there, and it’s the one place he can think of where they ever actually looked happy—hence, scattering their ashes by the tree in the photo). However, when there’s no answer, Fiona insists that Alby open the door to see if something’s wrong, her “bad feeling” a.k.a. feminine intuition suggesting to her that Ohm is most definitely in peril. Though she never would have expected it was at his own hand, for when the door is busted open, Fiona sees him strung up from the ceiling and immediately cuts him down just in time to spare his life.
When he wakes up in the hospital weeks later, his first order of business is to return to the hotel. Realizing it was Fiona that saved him, Ohm wants to thank her, only to be informed by Mal that she’s been missing since the night of the hotel’s Halloween party, which happened the night after Ohm’s suicide attempt. Concerned and, like Fiona, sensing something to be more than a little bit off, Ohm turns to Jerry (David Wilmot), the local mushroom-taking vagabond he befriended while scattering his parents’ ashes. In fact, if there’s anyone that would believe something sinister was afoot, it’s Jerry—himself suspected of having something to do with Fiona’s disappearance. Not just because he’s a vagabond, but because the police have learned Jerry killed his wife. Thus, he has a “murdering history.” But Jerry explains to Ohm that his wife was dying of a terminal illness and wanted to avoid the pain. It was after his “mercy killing” that Jerry then began to live his life in the woods.
Jerry also lets Ohm know that Fiona’s ghost spoke to him (thanks to the mushrooms opening his mind enough to see the thinly-veiled spectral world) and told him she was in the honeymoon suite of the hotel. The very one that the hotel’s owner, Cob (Brendan Conroy), has sealed up for years because, as Ohm overhears him telling some random kids in the lobby when he first arrives, there’s a witch who once lived in the woods and preyed upon lost travelers, eventually trapping them so that she can take them to the underworld, doomed to be ravaged by the other souls that have already been imprisoned there. Hearing this, Ohm not only tells the kids they shouldn’t talk to strangers, but also chalks the story up as “hokum,” along with Fiona and Alby’s insistence that Cob ensnared the witch in the honeymoon suite so she can’t take any more souls.
Unfortunately for Ohm, he’s forced to learn the hard way that one oughtn’t write off folklore (especially Irish folklore) as hokum. This after (through a series of inopportune events) getting locked in the honeymoon suite overnight, where he must contend not only with the supernatural, but also with the reconciliation of his past. More to the point, what he did when he was just a child. An accidental moment that has led to a lifetime of anger, repression and sadness. All leading him right to this very place where his parents loom even larger in his memory. To be sure, at the core of Hokum is a commentary on how the things we do to our parents as children can be just as traumatizing (if not more so) as the things they do to us. Even though it is so often assumed that parents are the only ones who can do damage.
As Ohm well knows, however, that’s certainly not always the case. But even when it isn’t, one must learn to forgive themselves for their sins if they ever expect to move on in life in any kind of way that might be deemed “healthy.” As opposed to “hurting.” Funnily enough, becoming a writer can fall into both categories of healing.
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