Adam Scott takes on an unexpectedly dark and unsympathetic role in the black-comic supernatural horror Hokum, which delivers some highly effective jump scares. He portrays Ohm, a successful American writer brooding over the brutally nihilistic conclusion of his latest novel. Ohm is also lonely, descending into alcoholism, and clearly tormented by some unacknowledged pain in his personal life.
Deciding the time is right, Ohm takes the ashes of his deceased parents—which he has kept for years—to scatter them in the only place he knows they were happy: a run-down hotel in remote, rural Ireland where his mother and father spent their honeymoon. He perhaps hopes to siphon off some postdated happiness for himself.
Arriving at this picturesque but faintly disturbing establishment, where he is the sole guest, Ohm is baffled and shocked by the sight of a dead goat in the car park. It turns out the animal had to be culled because it was climbing onto vehicles to look at its reflection in the paintwork. Ohm is entirely obnoxious to the hotel staff and to Fiona (Florence Ordesh), who works behind the bar. She is indifferent to his celebrity but senses how unhappy he is.
Ohm wonders if his parents actually stayed in the quaint "honeymoon suite," but it is boarded up. He is given to understand that a 400-year-old witch is held captive there. This amusing and gruesome premise is stretched by writer-director Damian McCarthy into a convoluted, bizarre extended narrative involving two separate hospital stays for Ohm.
David Wilmot entertainingly plays Jerry, the wacky hermit who lives in his van in the surrounding woodland where Ohm's parents once wandered. Jerry enjoys drinking a shroom-based smoothie of his own invention, with predictably chaotic results.
Hokum is in UK and Irish cinemas from 1 May.
