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 rises above so many films like it because it takes its character’s plight seriously, never winking at the audience, even as the impossible happens.

It's not "elevated" horror attempting to reinvent any wheels. It is, however, a very satisfying, very fun, and very well executed scary movie.

Damian McCarthy threads the needle between supplying old-school scares and a richly layered character piece that also functions as a meditation on his own perspective as a storyteller.

Hokum has so many of the right ingredients going for it.

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

Fun movie, recommended for genre fans. It makes the most of a small cast and few locations. It wears its influences very clearly but still shows a lot of creativity in how it blends horror tropes together. While it's easy to compare this movie to The Shining or 1408 (Stephen King hotel films) the most striking similarities for me were with Silent Hill (2 in particular). Fuzzy radio static, checking a map, solving a puzzle involving a clock, reaching into a dark crevice, cult symbols, all done by a traumatized man of dubious morality in a trench coat. Even more that I won't mention for spoilers. So fans of Silent Hill and survivor horror games should definitely check this one out.