Chapter 1: What is the premise of the movie Hokum?
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Adam Scott started out playing jerks in movies like Step Brothers and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, but on TV, he's generally a nice guy. I think Party Down, Parks and Rec, and most famously, Severance.
But in the legit, spooky new horror film Hocum, he's back squarely in D-bag territory, playing a nasty, embittered writer who stays in a haunted Irish inn while his past, and some ghosts, maybe even a witch, catches up with him. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we're talking about Hocum on this episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is Jordan Cruciola.
She's a writer and producer and the host of the podcast Feeling Seen on Maximum Fun. Hey, Jordan.
Hello. Thank you so much for having me back.
Of course. Also with us is Monica Castillo, film critic for the AV Club. First time I've gotten to say that. Welcome back, Monica, and congrats on the new gig. Thank you. So, so glad to be here. Great to have you. So, in Hocum, Adam Scott is a misanthropic writer who takes his parents' ashes to the lonely Irish inn where they honeymooned many years ago.
The place is kind of shabby, but you can't say it isn't steeped in atmosphere.
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Chapter 2: How does Adam Scott's character differ from his previous roles?
Between the surly staff and a local eccentric, there's even the legend of a local witch who haunts the honeymoon suite his parents stayed in. Said suite has been locked for years, and it would be a very, very
bad idea for anyone to get any ideas about going in there especially once the inn closes for the season you perhaps see where this is going hokum is in theaters now jordan kick us off what's going on what do you think really really solid spooky movie this i really hope people if they get the chance if it's around them that they see this one in theaters obviously horror is event cinema it's it's always kind of best experience in a theater hopefully with people who you can get scared around
But this one really, like, you will benefit from a surround sound setting. And truly, Adam Scott is so unlikable. To his core, unlikable in this. Almost an audaciously unlikable performance, I would say. And I was incredibly impressed. Normally, I have a hard time really caring about an unlikable guy in a movie. But he's so genuinely, like you said, misanthropic and...
dispirited and it really his emotional like rot and sadness seems so deep that it's like this man is carrying the scars of of a thousand small cuts and when you come to understand more of why he is the way he is it truly earns its reveal this movie earns its reveals i would say throughout it makes a like essentially quote-unquote single location horror movie feel really dynamic the space feels really alive the whole time
Really complete haunted house modified movie.
Absolutely. And Jordan, I want to pick up on something you just said, like see this in a theater because if you see this thing at home with a glare on the screen, you will not see this movie. This movie is steeped in darkness, very physical darkness. You need to see this in a darkened theater.
You will need a serious home AV setup to compensate for what you would be risking with a flat panel shiny screen.
Absolutely. Okay. Monica, what'd you make of it?
Oh, I also had tons and tons of fun. I had the benefit of seeing it with some friends, also in a movie theater that was properly dark and surround sound, so you're just enmeshed in that creepy audio soundscape that Damian McCarthy pulls together. The writer-director, yep. The writer-director, Damian McCarthy, who I was introduced to with his previous film, Oddity.
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Chapter 3: What makes Hokum a compelling horror film?
But that speaks to something that you both touched on. Like, I did like that Scott is not playing just a jerk. They double down. He's not just a grump and irascible curmudgeon. He physically injures someone.
He hurts someone. in like a shocking way. Super big jerk.
That is not surliness. That is sociopathy. That is real. That raises the stakes in a big way in a way that I'm not entirely sure the movie's in control of because that really risks what you mentioned, Jordan, me not giving a crap about what happens to this guy.
It's going to depend on the person, but like, I think the movie pulls it out. But if people walked about, there was like, I was alienated by how much I didn't like that guy. I'd be like, I get where you're coming from. Yeah. It feels like something just an American director couldn't do. Oh. Just a cultural understanding.
And except like, there's even a moment where he's being rude to a member of the hotel staff. Yeah. He's being, like, such a jerk looking for his room in the hotel, and he's totally lost. And she's like, hey, can I help you? And he's like, yeah, I can't find this stupid room, like, some version of that. And she's like, great, you can find it yourself.
That's not an interaction that you would have with an American service person in a hotel, but, like, there's a cultural understanding of this kind of, like, give as good as you get sort of reciprocal, like, all right, if you take a punch at me, I'm going to take a punch at you kind of thing, where I feel like it makes the movie...
It's speaking in a sort of language of darkness that I don't think the American cultural sensibility actually does adeptly. And in this context, like in the context of horror, like we need a little bit more, we need a little more sensation if we're going to do that. Like we need, I am yours. Mother!
We need a Tony Collette performance to kind of come with that as opposed to dry, droll Adam Scott. And I appreciate the palate cleanser, even if I don't need it all the time, of what Damian McCarthy could do. Because Oddity 2, it's a bit of an impenetrable movie with its characters. And you have this strange, inscrutable figure that's sort of the driving action for the terror in it.
And he does a good job with strange, inscrutable figures, I would say, Damian McCarthy. Oh, he really leans into it.
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Chapter 4: How does the film's setting contribute to its atmosphere?
And then he turns around and he's having a conversation with probably the most one-dimensionally nice guy in the entire movie and hurts him in a way that is so calculated and shocking as it happens. You're like, this is...
a horrible person we're dealing with and yet the ways the moments where you can feel him being moved like when the old man in the lobby is being kind of terrorizing the kids with an old spooky story he's like hey go find your parents leave the kids alone you can feel he even has limits even in moments where it feels like a limit should stop his own personal misanthropy it doesn't
I thought that was really well handled.
Yeah, I really had fun with that sort of blurring of the lines. But I also think we needed some sort of an inciting mystery to get us to that point in the mystery where things just get deeper and deeper and involves him in a different way than when he first kind of strolls in. So entitled, very much the pompous American tourist. Yeah. So then it has a complete different shift.
And that's what keeps you guessing.
Yeah. And we can't talk about how this movie resolves. But it does resolve in a way that, I mean, this is the danger with, I don't know, ghost stories, horror. Like, mysteries are always more fun than solutions, you know? Sure. Metaphor beats allegory. I think when things kind of chime against each other, they resonate with each other instead of they kind of line up.
And there's an effort at the very, very end to kind of line things up that I don't think the movie even wants to commit to. I think that's a fake out. I don't know. My sense that this trauma nonsense is a recent phenomenon, I was thinking about it. I don't think it is, right? Horror works on a metaphorical level. It always has.
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Chapter 5: What are the standout performances in Hokum?
Dracula means sex and Frankenstein means hubris and ghosts means unresolved issues. Trauma, I guess you would call it, right?
I mean, the amount of queer people I've talked to about werewolf transformation and them feeling so connected to werewolf stories through the notion of like the beast within and this terrible monstrosity that they have to hide and repress until it comes roaring out. Like, absolutely.
It's always been there. Maybe we didn't have the language for it and the way that we address it and talk about it is not the same that it used to. Yeah.
Like people just like now we're at an era now where we can have a super cut of Jamie Lee Curtis saying trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma. It was always there. And it's interesting.
The notion of way, like when the discourse finally catches something that's always been there and then kind of starts reacting to it, like it's new in the way that the way get out exploded horror and the consciousness in a way that
where the conversation that it took on became very mass market, but the conversation was about things that had always been happening, but it made a lot of people feel like they were discovering this thing that had just been invented for horror for them, so now they could finally like it in a way they couldn't before.
Do we feel like this movie is meeting the moment of where we want to feel in darkness, or do we want to be farther from darkness? Because I feel like that was the thing about the trauma movies. The trauma wave, that started when we're all very upset. Like the end of the teens going into 20. And it's like, oh, yeah, it's as big and bad and bleak as we thought it was.
And now we're like, yeah, now it's nihilism. I think it's interesting how we process the language around therapy and therapy speak in those things where it's like end woke and that kind of stuff. And there's a sort of backlash to sincerity and emotion. So does something like this with a vehicle of such a heel in the character of Adam Scott, is that the addition that the trauma movie needs?
Because we don't want a sympathetic person going through that. We want a bad person going through that. I don't know.
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Chapter 6: How does the cinematography enhance the horror experience?
You know, there's a journey and an emotional journey that's parallel to the story within a story and how he, you know, his perspective changes the way that story is shaped. So that's also interesting as like a sort of creator and storyteller and how our life experiences may then be reflected in the art that we make.
I'm so glad, though, since time immemorial, we send women to the sea for their hysteria and we go to isolated inns in the woods. I'm glad that that has always been the solution. Writer's retreat. Striders Retreat, Monica's new horror movie coming soon.
And listen, if you're a person who doesn't like scary movies, this is not for you. This is most resolutely not for you.
Yeah. Not for you. If the angle you come at this is I don't like scary movies, hard not recommend to you. Jump scares, creepy.
You'll spend your entire time looking at the lower left-hand corner of the screen just hoping nothing happens down there.
That's not even safe.
May or may not be how I... Watch this movie. Okay, that brings us to the end of our show. Hard recommendation for Holcomb. Jordan Cruciola, Monica Castillo, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for having us.
Happy Halloween. Happy October, everybody.
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