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.

With a tongue-in-cheek title inviting audiences to immediately dismiss its supposedly intense fear factor, Damian McCarthy’s new horror film arrives ready to play with convention and expectation. The scary thing, though, is that the movie exhausts itself halfway through, revealing Hokum as something closer to hogwash.

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.