Ohm Bauman is a disagreeable middle-aged American writer who makes a living by writing gloomy books which Hollywood turns into popular movies with happy endings. A woman disappears in the hotel at which he is staying on vacation. He turns amateur sleuth on his own authority and is trapped in the honeymoon suite where he is pursued by a witch or two. The different suspects are no more likeable than this improbable Poirot. One kills goats because they scratch the paint of his car. Another tells horror stories to young children. A third is on the run from the cops. A fourth has a secret. And so on.
“Hokum” (Neon), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, is a mix of murder mystery and horror. For one reason or another the film starts in the desert near Abu Dhabi where a man and boy are hunting for lost treasure using a map in a bottle. But this scene takes place in the mind of heavy-drinking Bauman, played by Adam Scott, who is choosing an ending for his novel. He visits the hotel in Ireland because he needs to scatter the ashes of his parents, who spent their honeymoon there. An elderly man in a wheelchair tells ghost stories to two small boys. Bauman interferes; “Go find your parents,“ he says, “and don’t talk to strangers again.” The writer threatens to report the wheelchair-bound man to the hotel’s owner. “It is my business,” the man says. “I am the owner.”
At the front desk he is invited to a Halloween party which “should be a good craic,” the receptionist says. “Craic is a word we use to describe fun times here in Ireland.” He notes his guest’s name. “I take my son to be a fan of yours,” he goes on. “A celebrity. Maybe I could bring up my son’s book and you could sign it for him?” “Nah,” Bauman says. But then he can’t find his room. “Are you lost?” a housekeeper asks. “What does it look like?” Bauman says. “With that attitude you can stay lost,” she says. Outside he meets a vagabond who drinks a cocktail of magic mushrooms mixed with goat milk. When you “stare into your own eyes the mushroom deepens the experience,” he says. After scattering the ashes Bauman gets pie-eyed on whisky. The bartender says she finds his books bleak. “These pages are populated by deeply disturbed, desperate people,” he says. But Hollywood rewrites his books into what he believes to be bad movies.
He asks her why the honeymoon suite is locked. It’s “haunted by a witch,” she says. He should carry a piece of chalk at all times to draw a circle on the ground around him should a witch appear. “If I ever think I’m being chased by a witch, I’ll look for a psychiatrist, not a piece of chalk,” he says. (He ends up needing both.) The hotel bellhop also asks for a book to be signed. Bauman picks up his dictaphone and describes the bellhop as a “oblivious charisma vacuum completely incapable of reading the room,” before burning the bellhop’s hand with a candle. “You burned my hand,” he says later. “That hurt.” At this stage there are two developments which I won’t reveal.
While too much is expected of Mr Scott (and it is far from clear why an American is needed in the script at all given that the murder mystery is Irish), the audience relies on him to tell the story. It is hinted that the local police are incompetent, crooked, and somehow “in on it.” He wears a “Columbo” (1971-1998) Mackintosh while he is investigating. An “old mechanical call bell” operated from a button of the wall of the honeymoon suite and sounding in the lobby below provides evidence of the occult. As he discovers clues—missing keys, say—the camera jerks to mimic his eyes. Not everybody is happy that the American has taken charge. “The best thing you can do now,” one of the suspects says, “is to get into your car and f*** off back to the airport while you still look like your passport picture.”
From “Psycho” (1960) on down, horror movies have made use of hotels. As well as a horror and a murder mystery, of which the film is a typical one, it also has the feel of an escape room. The set created inside the honeymoon suite, with its dumb waiter and padlocked metal-grated door and musical clock, is at once claustrophobic and a riddle. A television plays a deep-fake clip of a children’s show starring a clown. “You want help?” the clown says. “There’s none coming! Scared? You should be!” Sometimes the soundscape is of the “ooohhh…aaahhh…ooohhh” kind that children imitate when trick-or-treating. There are enough “why?”s for the audience to keep focused. The film settles at a pace which is easy to follow. But the filmmakers will not tell us enough about their suspects and hangers-on, leading to an imbalance between the American and the Irish cast. The opportunity for an ensemble piece is lost.
When I ambled downstairs for a “Maison Dieu” coffee after the early-evening screening, I wondered why the filmmakers created such an arrogant, loveless writer as their hero. Bauman says that his father “turned into a monster and drank himself into an early grave.” Patterns repeat. His character is ninety-nine percent nasty. Even when he is asked to help someone at the end, he likes to say no. “Haven’t I been through enough already?” he says.
Adam Poole
4th May 2026
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