As I left the theater after watching Hokum, I overheard a person behind me tell their partner, “Audio logs? Item-based puzzles? That movie felt like a video game.”
My eyes widened, as I now had nearly instantaneous confirmation that it wasn’t just me who felt this way–it wasn’t just me who spent nearly all of Hokum’s 107 minutes thinking, “Man, I wish I could play this.”
Damian Mc Carthy’s latest horror film has no IP attached to it. It’s not an adaptation or a blatant homage, and there are no subtle references, cheeky cameos, or a bizarre Tar-esque ending. And yet, the person walking behind me was entirely correct: Hokum feels like a video game movie. To be more specific, Hokum feels like an extremely good Silent Hill movie.
Allow me to set the relatively spoiler-free stage. Hokum follows a Sanderson-esque fantasy author, Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott), on a trip to spread his parents’ ashes near Ireland’s Bilberry Woods Hotel–their favorite vacation spot, according to Bauman. Prior to the trip, Bauman is seen struggling with writing the epilogue of his critically acclaimed Conquistador trilogy. The initial idea he has for its ending is bleak, seemingly reflecting his own mental state–and perhaps reinforcing his need to leave his home and do literally anything else.
However, everything about The Bilberry Woods Hotel feels off, to put it lightly. Bauman arrives to find a goat lying dead in front of the hotel doors. Inside, an elderly man tells two young boys a horrifying and age-inappropriate story involving a witch and dismemberment. Later on, a bellboy recounts his own run-in with a witch in the hotel’s honeymoon suite. Bauman dismisses this claim as hokum–utter nonsense born from reading too many Irish folkstories.
After spreading his parent’s ashes, we witness Bauman slam whiskey, berate others, and grow increasingly more agitated and aggressive. Anger and guilt seem to consume Bauman, though we’re not quite sure why. All of this culminates in a shocking moment only 20 or so minutes in, yet this incident is only a small part of a series of malevolent acts. Ultimately, Bauman is forced to navigate The Bilberry Woods Hotel in search of someone; all while horrors–perhaps real, perhaps imagined–pursue him.
Much like each entry in the Silent Hill series, Hokum is one part guilt-fueled psychological horror, one part supernatural horror, and one part White Claudia-filled madness. Though I certainly wouldn’t call the film confusing or hard to follow, the back and forth between what could be Bauman’s subconscious and the real events unfolding at The Bilberry Woods Hotel create a slight sense of disorientation that keeps things tense. Yet there are plenty of other qualities that amplify Hokum’s “Silent Hill-ness” in addition to this.
Similar to Silent Hill’s Midwich Elementary School, Silent Hill 2’s Wood Side Apartments, or Silent Hill 4: The Room’s Room 304, The Bilberry Woods Hotel feels like its own horrific set piece that consumes the souls inside it. As Bauman desperately seeks keys and makeshift tools in an attempt to escape the hotel–all while taking paths that narrowly avoid looming threats–I was reminded of all the various survival-horror titles I’ve played over the years. As he stumbled upon what I can only describe as “audio logs,” each one giving him more insight into what led to the situation he finds himself in, the similarities between Hokum and your average horror game felt uncanny.
But what makes me so adamant that Silent Hill is the closest comparison is that all of the characters in Hokum seem to carry baggage–and I don’t mean just the suitcases that belong to the hotel’s visitors. There’s a sense that Bauman is just one of many strange, tortured souls visiting The Bilberry Woods, making the hotel seem almost otherworldly. Here, the veil is thin, and dark creatures and revelations lurk just on the other side of it, arms outstretched.
Hokum feels like a Silent Hill game in all but name–which is actually par for the course with the series, considering it’s far more concerned with the games having thematic similarities rather than the same cast of characters or setting. Though Mc Carthy probably didn’t intend for it to be one, I’d argue that Hokum is one hell of an audition for him to direct the next Silent Hill movie. And with how eager studios are to adapt video games–and considering there’s a new Resident Evil film on the horizon–it wouldn’t surprise me if Konami was actively scouting a director to bring their franchise back to the big screen. Based on Hokum, I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who would do it quite as well as Mc Carthy.
