Hokum – 101 minutes

A scary, compelling supernatural horror, Hokum involves a trip taken to Ireland by a successful US author – his first time visiting the country.

Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) is a loner, writing the bleak epilogue to a book about a conquistador and his son who are looking for buried treasure in the desert.

While doing so, he begins seeing visions.

He opens a box containing postcards, a photo and ashes of his father and mother.

Next thing we know, he has hightailed it to a remote hotel in Ireland, where his parents spent their honeymoon. 

Although, his name sparks recognition among the staff, he is gruff and dismissive of requests from them to sign one of his books and read a manuscript.

Humourless, he wants to be left alone to write and to scatter his parents’ ashes in the forest by a large tree his mother was photographed next to.

Mind you, he is overseen while doing the latter by a bearded, dishevelled man named Jerry (David Wilmot), who offers Ohm a drink and some magic mushrooms.

We learn that Ohm’s mother died when he was only 10 and his father drank himself to death.

At the hotel, Ohm asks whether he can take a look at the honeymoon suite in which his parents may have stayed, but the notion is quickly dismissed. 

He is told that the place is locked and out of bounds, and has been for some time because it is haunted.

Subsequently, Ohm pillories a story relayed to him by hotel employee Fiona (Florence Ordesh) when she pulls out a picture book about how to combat witches.

Steeped in Irish folklore, it involves drawing a white chalk mark around one in the presence of such an enchantress.

The following night marks the celebration of Halloween, although Ohm has no intention of joining the hotel festivities.

It is then that the story takes a decidedly darker turn.

I am reminded of the phrase things that go bump in the night.

Think creaks, sudden loud sounds and frightening apparitions, and you get the idea.

Writer and director Damian McCarthy has crafted an impressive, atmospheric, psychological terror, complete with jump scares, rather than gore.

The screenplay reads like a fractured fairytale.

Aided by dramatic sound, music and lighting, Adam Scott is excellent as the misanthrope at the heart of proceedings.

He is hardly a likeable character, but his unrelenting intensity is a major drawcard.

David Wilmot too brings a creditable persistence to his motley characterisation of the oddity that is Jerry.

Florence Ordesh is a balancing and warmer presence as Fiona.

Hokum leaves an indelible impression as one of the more impressive examples of a genre film that had me intrigued, frightened and heavily invested from go to whoa.

Rated M, it scores an 8 out of 10.