Hokum arrives at SXSW with the confidence of a studio (Neon) that’s learned the playbook for turning horror into event cinema. But as an editorial thinker, I’m most struck by how this Irish-set ghost story doubles as a moral fable about accountability, not just apparitions. What makes Hokum compelling isn’t merely its creeping atmosphere—it’s how the film uses a haunted inn to press questions about guilt, redemption, and the uneasy way we project our past onto places we visit.
The hook is simple: a misanthropic author named Ohm Bauman, played with prickly charisma by Adam Scott, travels to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes. He’s not here to heal; he’s here to confirm his cynicism, to bury his childhood trauma under a layer of journalistic skepticism. Personally, I think the setup is delicious precisely because it refuses to grant him an easy, cinematic catharsis. Instead, the very act of returning to the site of parental memory becomes a catalyst for reckoning. What makes this particularly fascinating is how the film blends misanthropy with vulnerability—Ohm’s ego is both shield and magnet for the haunting that follows.
The inn itself acts as a character with memory. The screenplay builds a succession of intimate, almost stage-like conversations and glances that reveal how deeply a person’s past can echo in a place designed for hospitality. From my perspective, the setting becomes a moral instrument: rooms are not just backdrops but traps and mirrors. The hotel’s longstanding myth of a honeymoon suite—the site of enforced memory—suggests that places can be complicit in our self-delusions. This raises a deeper question: when a space remembers you more than you remember yourself, who’s truly in control?
The supporting cast sharpens the film’s moral texture. Florence Ordesh’s bartender is more than a serviceable hospitality figure; she becomes the moral conscience Ohm resists and the engine that compels him toward accountability. David Wilmot’s Jerry embodies the stubborn, resilient memory of those who refuse to let the past stay buried. Together, they push Ohm to a reckoning that feels earned, not manufactured by a blockbuster’s tempo. If you take a step back and think about it, Hokum quietly argues that redemption isn’t a grand reveal but a stubborn, incremental choice—the kind you make when you’re confronted with the people you’ve harmed and the places you can no longer pretend don’t matter.
Cinematographically, Hokum leans into isolation—the West Cork landscape offers a stark, almost tactile cold that enhances the film’s psychological weather. Colm Hogan’s visuals wrap the inn in a soft, uneasy luminance that gives way to sharper, gnawing textures as the hauntings intensify. What this really suggests is that atmosphere isn’t a garnish; it’s an argument. The sound design, with a spine-tingling score by Joseph Bishara, doesn’t merely frighten; it interrupts the protagonist’s internal monologue, forcing him to listen to a past he would rather ignore. The result is a horror that feels more architectural than ornamental—a reminder that fear, like memory, can be built into the walls you mistake for safety.
Yet Hokum isn’t just a mood piece. The late-second-half pivot toward a larger, supernatural mythology blends the intimate with the mythic, transforming Ohm’s personal story into a universal meditation on how past sins travel through generations. The ghostly imagery escalates from subtle, creeping dread to something more grotesque, aligning the film with a classic haunted-house arc while maintaining a distinctly indie heartbeat. In my view, that tonal shift is where Hokum earns its lasting sting: a patient, meticulous escalation that rewards audiences who lean in rather than recoil at the first chill.
What makes Hokum a potential breakout, beyond its solid craft, is its tone about accountability in a world quick to forgive but rarely heal. Neon’s strategic release — a prime slot with a festival pedigree — positions Hokum not as a mere fright fest but as a conversation starter about how we confront our own legacies. If this film catches the zeitgeist, it won’t be because it frightened us most; it will be because it reminded us that the bravest horror is often moral and intimate, not just scream-worthy.
In the end, Hokum is a strong, self-assured piece of work. Adam Scott delivers a performance that is both prickly and vulnerable, a tricky balance that keeps the character from becoming merely unlikeable. The film’s real achievement lies in making the audience forgive Ohm not because he stops being flawed, but because he chooses to engage with the consequences of those flaws. That’s the texture of a thoughtful horror: a story that makes you reconsider how you carry your own past into every new room you enter.
Personally, I think Hokum signals a we'll-call-it-a-turn for indie horror: quieter, character-driven work wearing its supernatural elements like a badge of moral inquiry. What many people don’t realize is that the film asks you to align your instincts with the protagonist’s arc, not just to cheer for him as he survives the night. If you walk out of the cinema with a sense that the inn’s whispers were less about ghosts and more about your own unfinished business, Hokum has done its job well. This is not merely a scare-laden jaunt through another remote manor; it’s a meditation on memory, guilt, and the stubborn possibility of repair in a world that wants to move on too quickly.
