‘Tis dark tonight
And darker still
The heart of one
With time to fill
With thoughts in thrall
And alcohol
And none to slow
Their slide downhill.

‘Tis dark tonight,
And darkness grows
Where monsters sleep
And shadows doze.
With one mistake,
The spell could break
And fell a fool
Like dominoes.

‘Tis dark tonight,
And dark it stays
As long as men
Walk wicked ways.
We’re terrified
The more we hide
Until the morning’s
Warming rays.
___________________

MPA rating: R (for brief violence, corpses, intense scares)

As many others do, I dove into the horror genre this October, more so than in past years, intending to deliver some reviews before Halloween, which obviously didn’t pan out. But even if spooky season is over, the racing hearts need not stop, and, despite a title that many would only know as a folksy dig from Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, Hokum is one of the best chillers of the year.

Adam Scott plays depressed author Ohm Bauman, who travels to a remote Irish hotel to spread his parents’ ashes in the scenic place where they had once honeymooned. He’s a thoroughly unpleasant guy, prone to writing misanthropic endings and insulting people to their face, and he certainly doesn’t pay heed to the rumors of a haunted suite where a witch is supposedly imprisoned. Through a series of twists and turns, he finds himself trapped in said suite and is forced to come face to face with both malevolent forces and his own guilt.

A lot of horror films often feel tied to a gimmick or mixed with humor to ease the impact of the scares, which I often tend to like, so I was impressed with how straight Hokum plays its haunted hotel scarefest. It may be par for the course with many horror fiends, but for me, this film scared the crap out of me. It fosters a genuinely creepy atmosphere, starting out with just an uneasy gloom and eventually filling you with dread every time the lights go out or line of sight is broken. And even if it telegraphs some of its jump scares rather obviously, they’re still effective more often than not.

Beyond the shocks, I also enjoyed the non-supernatural story at play, with a human villain getting their comeuppance in parallel with Ohm coming to terms with his own grief and misanthropy, reflected artfully in the depiction of his novel’s ending, which bookends the film. I understand that the Irish director Damian McCarthy has become a bit of a star in horror circles, and I can see why. It’s the kind of non-gory horror I prefer, so I’ll have to check out his other films, but maybe during the day… huddled under a blanket.

Rank: List Runner-Up

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