Hokum

Uncertainty is a genre trope this director is particularly gifted at manipulating. So many horror films are incoherent due to a lack of good writing; if anything in McCarthy’s script isn’t fully clear, it’s in the same manner that life itself fails to make sense.

Hokum is a refinement of what came before, not a rehash: a terrifically composed throwback that knows when to play things grounded and when to embrace the horror for its full potential.

Hokum is the latest fruit of McCarthy’s chameleonic gifts, and his best film yet.

As counter-programming to the early summer season's blockbusters, this delivers better than a lot of the more expensive titles against which it is competing. It serves as a potent reminder that a well-crafted atmosphere and a singular, focused vision can be far more terrifying than a hundred million dollars' worth of digital effects.

This eerie riff on The Shining feels as if the Irish writer-director has a better grasp on both the catch-and-release tension that the genre needs and the balancing of sharp shocks and slow-simmering dread.

It is an amusing and gruesome premise, which writer-director Damian McCarthy stretches out into a convoluted, bizarre extended narrative.

Despite the heavy metaphors and emotionally weighted hauntings, there’s nothing new here – it’s all painfully dull and familiar horror territory.

The story unfolds like a dish simmering gently on a low heat. However, its greatest strength lies in the fact that it embraces Irish folklore without borrowing from anything we’ve seen before, and that it doesn’t resort to cheap scares. As a viewer, one should be very grateful for that.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Nudging slightly above the average meter, hokum provides well produced, slow paced horror mystery. It kept me entertained through the runtime. The cast is decent, soundscape works well and the direction often reminded me of the good old days of 80s horror films with the familiar grumpy alcoholic novelist trope center stage. Effects are a mixed bag ranging often from practical makeup which, although fantastic, can feel uncanny even humerous. Sadly there are few genuine surprises to truly raise the bar but if you're in the right mood it will likely provide some fun.

Boring, bad, cheaply made and terribly acted excluding Adam Scott. Some of the acting was that bad it was like watching an episode of Faircity.

Analizando este metraje, me he dormido de la forma más placentera posible y lo peor de la pelicula es que se muere yanfri. Muy mal