reckoning with – Misryoum reviews “Hokum,” a folk-horror film that uses an Irish haunted hotel to confront Ireland’s unresolved history.
Ireland’s haunted-house stories rarely feel like pure escapism, and that is exactly what makes “Hokum” unsettling.. The film’s core premise places a reclusive U.S.. novelist—who comes to a remote Irish hotel to scatter his parents’ ashes—in the center of a mystery thick with dread. symbolism. and the sense that Ireland’s past never stays buried.
In Misryoum’s look at the film. “Hokum” uses its central keyphrase—reckoning with guilt—to frame what the characters want most: an explanation. a cure. or at least some form of moral closure.. The hotel staff trade stories about a haunted honeymoon suite. but the story turns more pointed when a beloved bartender disappears.. From there. the novelist’s search begins to feel less like a personal quest and more like an investigation into how institutions preserve their reputations while hiding what they have done.
That matters because “Hokum” treats haunting as more than atmosphere. It suggests that unresolved harm can linger in places where authority tightened its grip and where survivors were denied visibility, leaving later generations to puzzle out what was taken from them.
Damian McCarthy’s filmmaking style leans hard into that idea.. His earlier work similarly drew on folk-horror traditions. but “Hokum” adds its own texture through recurring motifs: light and shadow that seem to guide (or trap) the viewer. extended stretches of near-total darkness. and a sense of characters navigating corridors that mirror their own private histories.. The film’s setting in expansive Irish countryside contrasted with claustrophobic interiors reinforces the feeling that the past is both widespread and inescapably close.
Misryoum also notes that the horror isn’t limited to ghosts or monsters.. The film’s women—often silenced. threatened. or rendered powerless—sit at the story’s emotional center. and the supernatural elements operate like a distorted substitute for justice.. In Irish horror more broadly. creators have repeatedly returned to historical wounds tied to church-run systems that confined and exploited vulnerable people. with recent years marked by wider public understanding and debate over state and institutional responsibility.
In that context, “Hokum” lands with particular force when it implies that secrecy can become a form of governance.. Even without delivering tidy answers. the film’s haunted spaces raise uncomfortable questions about who was harmed. who benefited. and how easily “order” can be preserved by burying inconvenient truths.
The film’s mythology also pulls from Irish folklore in ways that feel more than decorative.. Figures associated with ancient winter and the supernatural woods appear as a kind of spiritual counterweight to institutional power. suggesting that folk traditions can carry different answers when official moral structures fail.. The movie’s blend of humor and dread further underscores its argument: the past can be terrifying precisely because it is familiar. passed along as story. warning. and justification.
By the time “Hokum” reaches its final turns. Misryoum is left with a clear takeaway: whether the film is read as personal tragedy or national allegory. its central question is difficult to shake.. How does a society move forward when confinement, shame, and silence are treated as historical footnotes rather than living realities?