Latest / Film Curious / Hokum Non-Spoiler Review - Damian McCarthy's Folk Horror Follow-Up Is Legitimately Good, Seriously Scary

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Hokum Non-Spoiler Review - Damian McCarthy's Folk Horror Follow-Up Is Legitimately Good, Seriously Scary · Film Curious

• 0:00
  Hey guys, welcome to Film Curious Ashley here.
• 0:02
  This episode Pete's giving you a non spoiler review of the film
• 0:05
  hokum, as he was able to see a limited release of it before it hit
• 0:08
  theaters wide this past weekend.
• 0:10
  And it looks like we've got ourselves a little horror
• 0:12
  movie streak going from last week with Lee Cronin's The Mummy.
• 0:15
  So catch that review if you haven't yet.
• 0:16
  We had a lot of fun with it and as always, thanks for tuning in and we hope you
• 0:20
  enjoy.
• 0:36
  I did get to see one other thing.
• 0:38
  This is actually a midnight screening
• 0:40
  at the Florida Film Festival, which was held at the NZ in Theater
• 0:44
  in Maitland, near Orlando, which sailed Lando.
• 0:48
  It is the follow up to Damien McCarthy's oddity.
• 0:53
  It is called hokum, which is a,
• 0:58
  I'll say, folk horror.
• 1:02
  Film which Adam Scott,
• 1:05
  who is not playing an Adam Scott that he always plays, which is nice.
• 1:08
  He gets to kind of break away from that, and he's actually done a really good job
• 1:12
  of that lately, being able to to stretch out with that.
• 1:15
  But it is a in the simplest
• 1:18
  and most narrow of terms, you know, a haunted hotel film
• 1:22
  that, again, takes place in Ireland,
• 1:25
  has some, has a lot of roots in folk horror.
• 1:28
  And I liked oddity a bunch.
• 1:33
  I thought it had a great tone, great
• 1:35
  atmosphere, some really good scares,
• 1:38
  and at the end of the film of oddity,
• 1:42
  it it leaned into this thing of a hotel
• 1:46
  of a bellman, like a haunted bellman and hokum.
• 1:50
  I think if I watched them back to back,
• 1:53
  they tie into each other in one way or the other.
• 1:56
  But you don't need to have seen oddity at all.
• 1:59
  It's nothing like that.
• 2:01
  I enjoyed this movie a bunch.
• 2:04
  I got to see it with a packed theater,
• 2:07
  and a number of moments had people reacting.
• 2:13
  And as someone who doesn't get very scared at movies
• 2:18
  nowadays because you've seen so many, you know there's a lot of so many tricks.
• 2:22
  But man, oh man.
• 2:23
  What are two moments?
• 2:24
  One in particular really got a good, you know, out of me.
• 2:28
  And it wasn't a character drops a lot of glass bowls in a hallway.
• 2:34
  That loud noise kind of nonsense.
• 2:36
  It was a yeah, it wasn't like a jump scare, but I jumped from the scare.
• 2:42
  So that was nice. Welcome.
• 2:45
  That back is a thing there may be,
• 2:49
  and I don't want to get into any, any spoilers on it.
• 2:52
  There is a narrative bit that was also in
• 2:59
  oddity that is repeated here in hokum.
• 3:04
  I, I just hope that in the whatever next movie
• 3:07
  Damian McCarthy makes, he doesn't do it again.
• 3:10
  And I can't I can't get into that without possibly spoiling.
• 3:14
  But I will say, if you pay enough attention, nothing's going to be like.
• 3:18
  Oh, I can't believe you know Abby.
• 3:21
  Or see, like, it's not that type of movie.
• 3:23
  That's not what it's doing.
• 3:24
  Horror has had a really great run recently of,
• 3:27
  you know, it's scary, but it's the emotional journey of the character,
• 3:31
  which has always been the most.
• 3:33
  We go back to even the classic like The Exorcist,
• 3:35
  like it's about the emotional journey of those characters. Right?
• 3:38
  That's that's what makes them good. Yeah.
• 3:41
  And so it makes you keep coming back on these.
• 3:44
  And there's another one here.
• 3:46
  You know, Adam Scott has a, you know, a path to walk.
• 3:51
  And while you will probably figure out a portion of that pass
• 3:56
  within the first five, ten minutes, I'm not sure if the movie is aware
• 4:01
  that you're that you can easily figure that out in the five, ten minutes.
• 4:05
  That's always a question of, you know, to the individual,
• 4:08
  I just happen to have a occasionally
• 4:11
  a good nose for like, oh, well, that probably is because of this.
• 4:15
  And that will lead to that.
• 4:17
  And that was all that all lined up
• 4:20
  with what happened in the film, but it didn't take away from it at all.
• 4:23
  Check out oddity if you haven't yet as a nice little,
• 4:26
  you know, lean into that world and check out hokum.
• 4:30
  I really I really quite enjoyed it.
• 4:32
  I hadn't seen either.
• 4:34
  So maybe when it does full release I'll be able to catch it in theaters.
• 4:40
  Yeah.
• 4:41
  But I, I I've gotten better in the last dad day,
• 4:46
  I guess five years about watching horror movies.
• 4:50
  I'm not the I like, I enjoy them, I can thoroughly enjoy them,
• 4:53
  but I'm one of those that, like an image, will stick in my mind
• 4:56
  and the person stays in the corner when I go to the bathroom at night
• 4:59
  sort of thing.
• 5:00
  So like I, I tread lightly and I watch them early enough in the day.
• 5:05
  I try to not like delve into it later and I less.
• 5:08
  I'm like fully addicted to whatever I'm watching or it's really engaging me. But
• 5:12
  that's typically like the these limited horror series these days, you know.
• 5:18
  But yeah, I'll watch it.
• 5:20
  But like, I always have to,
• 5:21
  like kind of pump myself up a little bit to be like, I can, I can do this.
• 5:25
  I mean, most of the time I can handle it.
• 5:27
  Like, I don't really get that scared.
• 5:29
  You never strike me as someone like that.
• 5:31
  That's so funny.
• 5:32
  But, like.
• 5:32
  Have we ever watched a horror movie together?
• 5:35
  A bunch tons, right? Yeah, I felt like.
• 5:38
  Yeah, like, I feel like I've watched a lot of horror movies with you, so.
• 5:43
  No, I. Hide it. Well,
• 5:47
  like.
• 5:48
  I mean, that's my secret.
• 5:49
  I hide all of my emotions pretty well.
• 5:52
  Unless it's secret, cap.
• 5:53
  Yeah, unless it's a happy.
• 5:56
  I'm having fun that I.
• 5:57
  I think that too, but.
• 6:04
  I'm just not the person you know, Pete.
• 6:06
  I just know total mask.
• 6:08
  It's always the opposites.
• 6:10
  Was the opposites.
• 6:11
  No, I usually handle that's.
• 6:14
  The thing is, I think it's more of like the suspense of.
• 6:17
  Will this scare me more than, like, I'm actually scared while watching it
• 6:21
  because most of the time I find some of the, the, the actual,
• 6:25
  the scary parts to kind of make me laugh, but in the like, I don't find it funny.
• 6:30
  It's just like, oh my god, that's terrifying reaction.
• 6:34
  I kind of laugh at like how scared it made me.
• 6:37
  Yeah, I have that too.
• 6:39
  I there's a lot of times with a,
• 6:42
  I hate that I can even come up with this, but like number of times
• 6:45
  I've been in a hospital, like waiting to hear
• 6:47
  or getting examined by a doctor and I'll start laughing.
• 6:51
  Oh yeah. I'm just like.
• 6:53
  It's like nervous laughter or something, but it's what my body
• 7:00
  falls back on is.
• 7:02
  Yeah, I think it's. Laughing it through.
• 7:03
  Yeah, I think, yeah, I make a joke out of it.
• 7:06
  If it's funny, it's not as scary, right?
• 7:08
  I think that, yeah, that might be the reaction.
• 7:11
  I'm so you know what?
• 7:14
  Don't watch a trailer for this, guys.
• 7:15
  I gotta say, I just watched
• 7:17
  I did see a trailer for this movie before, so unrelated.
• 7:21
  Nothing is probably spoiled, but there's a couple of visual cues
• 7:26
  in the trailer where going empty.
• 7:29
  Don't don't bother.
• 7:30
  Just just check out the movie.
• 7:33
  That's that's my suggestion as well for hokum.
• 7:36
  I wonder how other people reacted to it.
• 7:40
  I felt this has been the gods.
• 7:42
  It's strange and this doesn't spoil anything in Holcomb,
• 7:45
  but I've seen this strange reaction to people.
• 7:48
  It's become like a meme, actually, where they're like, oh,
• 7:53
  this movie starts with devil worship.
• 7:55
  And guess what?
• 7:56
  In the end, it's devil worship. I'm like,
• 8:00
  yeah.
• 8:01
  And so that the what?
• 8:02
  The story is cyclical I don't what.
• 8:04
  Yeah.
• 8:05
  Like that's a.
• 8:05
  Problem because yeah because they're like oh it's
• 8:08
  you know, it's exactly what they said it was in the beginning.
• 8:10
  I'm like, yeah, well not everything has to be a twist, right?
• 8:14
  Like like it's not.
• 8:16
  You know, like going back to.
• 8:17
  The seal. It's like. Yeah.
• 8:19
  You know. Yeah.
• 8:20
  Go moving through the story.
• 8:23
  I have heard that in reference to like hereditary
• 8:26
  and, What what what. No.
• 8:30
  Like, oh, it was, it was really like demons, like.
• 8:34
  Yeah.
• 8:34
  What do you want it to be, a fucking David Copperfield illusion?
• 8:37
  Like, what are you.
• 8:38
  Well, watching like, an M Night Shyamalan movie, like, every time.
• 8:42
  Is that what you want? Every.
• 8:44
  That's what a lot of people, they think that they're there to solve
• 8:47
  a mystery and be like, I figured it out, and that's what they're there for.
• 8:53
  They're not there to be told the story.
• 8:55
  That's sad.
• 8:56
  I've seen that because
• 8:57
  it was in reference to that and Long Legs, which we referenced
• 9:00
  actually earlier, where it was like, oh, see, it's really the devil.
• 9:04
  It's like, yeah, cool.
• 9:08
  The filmmaker wasn't hiding that.
• 9:10
  Like, that was that was the matter.
• 9:12
  It wasn't.
• 9:13
  That wasn't a puzzle box to be solved.
• 9:15
  Like that's. Yeah,
• 9:18
  the sing is, you know, cool. Yep.
• 9:21
  Devils real.
• 9:21
  And he's going out and sending people to to murder y'all.
• 9:26
  Oh, I don't know.
• 9:28
  It's a weird a very weird reaction, but I could see
• 9:31
  people having that with this one too, where it's folk, it's folklore.
• 9:35
  So, you know, the idea of a witch and then like, if it's if if a witch actually
• 9:39
  shows up, it's like, oh, a which showed up and you said it was a witch.
• 9:43
  Yeah.
• 9:44
  Yes. That's what happened.
• 9:46
  Rosemary's baby.
• 9:47
  Guess what is the actual Antichrist?
• 9:51
  It doesn't make it a bad movie at the end.
• 9:53
  That's nonsensical.
• 9:54
  It's.
• 9:55
  Yeah, I have heard I have seen that a number of times recently.
• 9:59
  And every time I see them, like, I don't know what the hell you are talking about.
• 10:03
  Like, where is this an issue?
• 10:05
  Yeah.
• 10:05
  I mean, so I'm like the I am the opposite of you
• 10:09
  where I don't pick up on things, but I think like, I.
• 10:14
  Anyways.
• 10:15
  I don't like, I don't I kind of, I think I just go in with like open mind,
• 10:20
  you know, like I'm not gonna let me take me on this journey, you know.
• 10:24
  Yeah. I'm not there to.
• 10:25
  Yeah.
• 10:26
  So I never like, try to predict what's going to happen.
• 10:30
  I usually like at the end I go, oh yeah, yeah, I do like there was that
• 10:34
  and there was that.
• 10:34
  But like going into it, I, I don't know how I just kind of just,
• 10:38
  I turned that like the problem solving part of my brain off.
• 10:43
  It's not that I'm trying to do it.
• 10:45
  A lot of times I will figure something out,
• 10:48
  not because I'm smart, like in reading, like the script or something like that.
• 10:54
  It's because the camera will do something.
• 10:57
  Like, I remember we watched one of the best examples, the funniest God dancing.
• 11:02
  Great show brought church with David Tennant,
• 11:06
  Olivia Colman, Jodie Whittaker, the UK version and it was this murder
• 11:12
  mystery show wrapped around, you know, emotional human problems.
• 11:17
  And I guess that's the only way around wrapping that around anyways.
• 11:21
  And episode two of like nine,
• 11:24
  I said, oh, that person did it and there was no reason to sink this.
• 11:29
  It was only because
• 11:32
  within a scene that's
• 11:33
  being shown, there was a shot of a character
• 11:37
  that didn't need to be there,
• 11:40
  and I only interacted with this character
• 11:45
  like once or twice, and I was like, oh, well, that's that right.
• 11:50
  It's right there.
• 11:51
  And other other shows, people try to get cute
• 11:55
  and they blow it and they think it's a surprise.
• 11:59
  And that's what the problem, that's when I don't like it.
• 12:01
  When a director tries to get cute and it's like,
• 12:05
  I'm going to hide this over here and no one's going to notice it.
• 12:07
  And then like on your second view and you're going to be like, oh my God.
• 12:11
  And that happened in a couple of movies.
• 12:13
  One of them was this overall fun, sort of fun
• 12:16
  movie called Search or Searching,
• 12:20
  where this girl goes missing and her father
• 12:23
  is trying to find her, but only through, like the power of social media.
• 12:26
  And there's a picture of this girl outside of her high school or her college.
• 12:32
  And the sign behind her is for the sports team and the sports team.
• 12:38
  I want to say it was called San Jose Catfish, and I was like,
• 12:42
  oh, so she got catfished
• 12:45
  because why the why else was that the name of that team?
• 12:49
  Yeah, yeah.
• 12:50
  Like I was like, that makes no sense at all like that.
• 12:52
  Then that's it.
• 12:53
  We're just waiting to find out.
• 12:54
  And then later,
• 12:56
  you know, maybe like halfway through the film, you meet a character
• 12:59
  who's a son of of one of the other characters
• 13:03
  in the film, and he's you only see him in, like, the background,
• 13:07
  but he's heavily shot, like, lit from behind with his face all dark.
• 13:11
  I was like, I just catch this by that guy.
• 13:13
  And then the movie plays it out like it's this big surprise and I'm like, it's not.
• 13:17
  And then actually, a recent Marvel series did this to me and I have not watched it.
• 13:22
  I have not been able to go back to it.
• 13:24
  And it was Ironheart.
• 13:26
  And I want to say.
• 13:28
  I watched I just watched Wonder Man, but I did not.
• 13:30
  Let me tell you something, because I just drove me crazy.
• 13:35
  There's been a running. Check it out.
• 13:37
  There's been a running joke,
• 13:39
  and I will admit, I have beaten this horse into the ground of.
• 13:43
  Every time Marvel announces something,
• 13:47
  I will post Mephisto. And.
• 13:51
  And so I'm watching Ironheart, and there's a scene between two characters.
• 13:57
  They're in an alleyway or something, and behind
• 14:01
  the character is a massive promo
• 14:07
  or something for The Damnation of Foust.
• 14:12
  And I'm like,
• 14:14
  oh, I like the the Faustin deal
• 14:17
  with the devil is this this is Mephisto.
• 14:21
  And yes, it was.
• 14:24
  It turns out I was like, fuck this.
• 14:25
  I'm actually looking this up because if this is actually Mephisto
• 14:29
  and they put a poster of Foust behind this goddamn character,
• 14:35
  I'm going to I'm going to lose my shit
• 14:38
  because it's so ridiculous to to do that.
• 14:41
  Yeah, yeah, that's that's what it was.
• 14:43
  I was like, why. Why, why distracted?
• 14:47
  Because they mean.
• 14:48
  Because they were like, oh, they'll be you'll look back at this and be like,
• 14:51
  God damn, look at that style.
• 14:53
  Still, they'll find it out on Twitter and it will go social or whatever it's like.
• 14:57
  And it's just. Like.
• 14:57
  So yeah, it was like, we're just going to do an Easter egg here.
• 15:01
  And I mean, movies have that all the time.
• 15:03
  Like they have visual cues and that, but when it's so on Front Street,
• 15:08
  it's, it's weird to then act like it was this big secret and big reveal.
• 15:14
  It's fine to have that stuff, but don't act like
• 15:19
  you know you've made it.
• 15:21
  That only Sherlock Holmes that ever sick of this out.
• 15:23
  You just got to read the background.
• 15:24
  I remember so many like, student films that I would see.
• 15:27
  It'd be like a character's going into a situation where they shouldn't.
• 15:31
  And one of them in particular, there's a bright neon sign
• 15:35
  that they made that said turn Back now.
• 15:40
  And it's just like at a party.
• 15:42
  It's like at this person's house, on a wall, at a party.
• 15:46
  And I'm like, why?
• 15:48
  Why is that there?
• 15:49
  What is the backstory of this? Yeah. Like what?
• 15:52
  Why is that there?
• 15:53
  And why do you think that I need to be told in legit
• 15:58
  bright flashing lights that this character should turn back? Now?
• 16:02
  It's just a strange, right?
• 16:04
  I don't know what the line is where I get like, no, stop that,
• 16:09
  because it can ruin something that I think the person is working on.
• 16:14
  I mean, there's other films, you know, like memento tips.
• 16:17
  It's fucking hand right in front of you.
• 16:18
  If you pay close enough attention in the first 45 minutes or so.
• 16:23
  Yeah, you can figure something massive out in that film.
• 16:27
  But it it happens
• 16:30
  in the blink of an eye and you might miss it.
• 16:34
  Well, I mean, we could even talk about the drama of, you know, the, the.
• 16:40
  Absolutely photo of.
• 16:43
  But that ties into you have to have knowledge.
• 16:45
  You have your poster also, which is a wild thing
• 16:50
  to kind of throw into something.
• 16:52
  I've only seen it once, and I remember we were trying to remember
• 16:55
  if they showed that before and then showed it afterwards.
• 16:57
  But, that's that's interesting.
• 17:00
  To bring it back to.
• 17:01
  That is kind of a fun trick.
• 17:04
  Is that is that going to work? Yeah.
• 17:07
  But then do you need tricks when you're dealing with that subject as a whole?
• 17:10
  Nother subject.
• 17:14
  That's like
• 17:14
  a that that goes into kind of like sociology.
• 17:17
  And I'm not gonna I'm not even going to delve into that.
• 17:21
  Be like in Star Wars.
• 17:22
  And this is stupid suggestion,
• 17:24
  because I don't think Lucas really had this part down when he wrote it.
• 17:27
  Anyway, be like in Star Wars.
• 17:30
  If when we first meet Darth Vader, there's a big flashing sign that says,
• 17:36
  like Father in Latin above him, you'd be like, why is that there?
• 17:40
  Why is this?
• 17:41
  Say father in Latin above the space mayor?
• 17:44
  Oh, well, what's going. On here?
• 17:46
  Which, like, wait, so is Darth Vader Latin for father
• 17:50
  or is it German for some reason.
• 17:52
  So I thought somebody said it. Was. Really for father.
• 17:54
  Yeah, yeah.
• 17:56
  Is it like Darth Vader?
• 17:57
  Like a pretty obvious.
• 17:59
  Oh, I want to find. This translation.
• 18:02
  Vader meaning
• 18:04
  Vader meaning in German.
• 18:07
  Vader meaning in German is father.
• 18:08
  That's great.
• 18:10
  So I'm. Like, oh, voter voters.
• 18:13
  Oh, okay, so it's just a similarity.
• 18:15
  But yeah, so I always was like, so are the German elections.
• 18:19
  Yeah.
• 18:19
  Like are the German audiences going.
• 18:23
  But but it's not because and VAT are two different words.
• 18:27
  And it's just like.
• 18:29
  I wouldn't be surprised if that's where Lucas put it.
• 18:32
  But like that's different because you're not going to immediately be like what?
• 18:35
  We're probably spelling this wrong and it's a different letter.
• 18:38
  And that means farther, right?
• 18:40
  You see, like there's a space, there's a space in between that leap that
• 18:44
  unless you have the secondary knowledge, you are not going to
• 18:48
  make the first assumption.
• 18:50
  Right.
• 18:51
  That you know, what actually that that actually is is the thing.
• 18:54
  If if I'm given the secondary knowledge,
• 18:59
  if I don't have
• 19:00
  the secondary knowledge, I shouldn't be able to make that that connection.
• 19:04
  Right. It should be something. That difference.
• 19:06
  That requires me
• 19:08
  to make one too many steps, unless I'm doing like a murder mystery.
• 19:11
  And I don't like when murder mysteries, when the end is like.
• 19:17
  And here's how you could have figured it out.
• 19:19
  A bunch of shit we never talked about, right?
• 19:23
  It's totally out of left field.
• 19:25
  Like, yeah, no, I never read crumbs.
• 19:26
  I need I needed to add up at the end.
• 19:28
  Yeah. Like, oh,
• 19:30
  I figured this out because of information that is in my character's head.
• 19:33
  And you were never, ever, ever told this.
• 19:37
  And you'll never figure it out.
• 19:39
  I don't like that either.
• 19:40
  That's that's it. Isn't that the Christie thing?
• 19:45
  No letter shows up.
• 19:47
  Yeah, yeah.
• 19:50
  No, definitely check that out if it's playing near me and then I'll.
• 19:54
  I'll see where I can find oddity.
• 19:56
  But yeah.
• 19:57
  No, I like I like the folklore type horror stuff into that.
• 20:03
  So I love it.
• 20:05
  Free waka f r e w
• 20:09
  a k a 2024 film.
• 20:13
  I think it's on shudder or it was for a while.
• 20:16
  Free Waka free a.k.a.
• 20:20
  fantastic folk horror film
• 20:23
  like and no physical
• 20:26
  release as of yet, which is really sucks.
• 20:29
  I guess it's on AMC.
• 20:32
  Plus, what the fuck is AMC plus?
• 20:35
  What was the remember when I was like something?
• 20:37
  Oh, it was like the that one's like it kind of makes sense.
• 20:41
  What was it was like some random one, remember?
• 20:43
  And I was like, oh, you could watch the Billy Joel.
• 20:46
  Was it the the Russia?
• 20:50
  Oh, yeah. Remember the Iron Curtain?
• 20:53
  Yeah. Like I saw it, like forever go back on HBO.
• 20:56
  But I was trying to find it where you could watch it to
• 20:58
  to tell you where to watch it.
• 20:59
  And it was like some random ass streaming service.
• 21:03
  Yeah. I can't remember.
• 21:05
  I was hilarious, though.
• 21:07
  I was like, what is this streaming service?
• 21:09
  Too many.
• 21:11
  There's too many.
• 21:11
  But also, I don't want to I don't want to corporate choke hold on them either.
• 21:15
  So I don't know. That's a whole different discussion.
• 21:17
  No chokeholds today.
• 21:19
  Well anyways. Yeah. Holcomb.
• 21:23
  Holcomb to Darth Vader.
• 21:24
  Yeah there we go.
• 21:29
  Hey guys.
• 21:30
  Ashley here.
• 21:30
  Thanks for listening to film. Curious if you enjoyed this episode.
• 21:33
  There's plenty more to come.
• 21:35
  I'll be reviewing new theatrical releases and just dreaming as much as possible,
• 21:38
  so make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
• 21:41
  Thanks again. See you real soon!