Hokum Can’t Quite Stick The Landing

By: Isabelle George

When I review a film, I ask one question. Is this film the best version of what it set out to be? Each film has a purpose. Sometimes a film’s purpose is to make you laugh or cry, sometimes its purpose is to make you believe a certain opinion. The goal of most horror films is to scare their audiences. Did Hokum scare me? Yes. That being said, I still don’t know if it fully worked for me.

In theory, I should like Hokum. I like Adam Scott. I like folk horror. I even like films with unsympathetic protagonists! But Hokum simply did not work for me. Directed by Damian McCarthy, the film concerns writer Ohm Bauman (Scott) who visits Ireland to scatter the ashes of his parents. He visits the hotel where they spent their honeymoon, learns that its honeymoon suite is haunted by a witch, generally acts like a jerk to everyone he meets, and attempts suicide. His life is saved when Fiona, a bartender, decides to check on him. When he returns to the hotel, he discovers that Fiona has gone missing. Who did it? Was it the witch? Was it Jerry, the crazy local who lives in his van? It’s up to Ohm to solve her disappearance and confront his own deep-seated trauma in the process.

For me, most aspects of this film boil down to “I can’t complain”. The acting? Pretty good, I guess. I can’t complain. The editing, cinematography, music? I guess it’s fine. I can’t complain. The only outlier is the screenplay. I can’t say this is the worst screenplay I’ve ever witnessed. It doesn’t say anything actively malicious. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t say anything at all. And believe me, I absolutely can complain.

The way that trauma manifests in this film feels almost juvenile. Ohm feels responsible for his mother’s death, because he literally shot her by accident while playing with his father’s shotgun. He was watching a television show when he shot her, so the show’s host becomes a monster that haunts him. This isn’t a portrayal of trauma that feels nuanced or personal to me. It feels like what happens when someone tries to make the next Hereditary based entirely on half-remembered recollections of Stephen King stories. The protagonist is a snarky, hard-bitten cynic, because that’s how protagonists have behaved in better movies, but also because it’s a lazy way to pretend like you wrote a dynamic character. He starts off the movie not caring about anyone or anything, and then he suddenly cares! Wow! It’s almost like character development!

This film is at its best when it gets down to good old-fashioned jumpscares. As much as Hokum would like to be a serious psychological drama, the only times I felt anything were when the movie went back to basics. When Ohm exits a room and we see his mother’s ghost following him, I honestly screamed! If Damian McCarthy were content with simply giving his audience a good scare, I’d give this film a much more positive review. But he tried instead to turn it into something deeper and more profound. And that wouldn’t be a problem if he’d actually thought of something deep and profound to say. I don’t know Damian McCarthy. I don’t know the kinds of movies he wants to make. I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing. But in this film, I could sense a gaping, cavernous hole where some real insight was supposed to be.

I fear that “elevated horror” might not have been good for the horror landscape. True, there are some directors associated with “elevated horror” that I do like, but not everyone can be Robert Eggers. While it’s true that horror has long been a genre overlooked by critics and Academy voters, I worry that we’ve overcorrected. In a desperate attempt to be liked by the professional opinion-havers of show biz, countless horror directors have tried to make their films say something, despite the fact that a good number of them clearly haven’t thought much about what they’re trying to say. Hokum contains themes of grief, trauma, and guilt. But why? Does Damian McCarthy feel these things? Does he have any thoughts on why or how another person might feel these things? It seems as though McCarthy knows that his film should say something, but the only reason it contains these themes is because he thinks “Well, a serious film should have these themes!”. He is aware that these themes have been used in well-liked horror films before, but cannot justify their existence in his own film. As I sat in the theater, I thought “What does this tell me about the director? What does he want to tell me about his experiences, or his worldview, or anything at all?” Hokum is a film that wants to appear vulnerable, but I’ve never seen a film more guarded. Damian McCarthy won’t tell you a single thing about himself. He thinks it’s enough to tell you about other people.

Obsession Exceeds Expectations

By: Isabelle George

In a review of the 2005 film Elizabethtown, critic Nathan Rabin coined the term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”. A Manic Pixie Dream Girl, according to Rabin, “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” The phrase has become somewhat controversial, and Rabin himself even wrote an article apologizing for creating it. What many people miss about the MPDG is that these characters are not being criticized simply for being bubbly, or for having quirky interests. The problem that Rabin and many other critics have is that these women seem to have no goals of their own (outside of bringing a little joy and whimsy into the lives of their boyfriends, that is). The term has been used to refer to a number of quirky love interests. The archetype has even been critiqued and dissected in other romantic comedies, like Ruby Sparks and 500 Days of Summer. To my knowledge, it has never been discussed in a horror movie. Not until Obsession, that is. Curry Barker’s latest film combines the “be careful what you wish for” message of The Monkey’s Paw with the preexisting image of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl to create a film that is compelling, prescient, and thoroughly chilling.

Obsession chronicles the life of a young man named Bear (Michael Johnston). He has an all-consuming crush on Nikki (Inde Navarette), his childhood best friend, but he just can’t muster up the courage to tell her! When he stumbles upon the One Wish Willow, a toy that claims to grant wishes… well, I think you can guess what happens next. Almost immediately after making his wish, Nikki’s behavior changes. He becomes her entire world. She watches him sleep. She becomes violent and irrational at the thought of him doing anything without her. Leave Her To Heaven (1945), one of my favorite films of all time, serves as a critique of the roles women were expected to fill in the postwar era. 1987’s Fatal Attraction exemplified the anxieties of Reagan-era boomers. Obsession does the same for a Gen Z audience. Just as Fatal Attraction’s Alex Forrest and Leave Her To Heaven’s Ellen Berent illustrate the worst fears of contemporary men, Nikki Freeman epitomizes what every Gen Z man is afraid of- the possibility that their actions will come back to bite them in the ass.

There is another horror lurking under the surface of Obsession, a horror that every woman is intimately familiar with. The horror lies in the idea that a man you’ve known for years, a man you trust as a close friend, sees you as nothing more than a potential sex object. Nikki has big dreams, a personality, a life outside of Bear. He’s more than willing to wipe that all away for the chance of dating her. When we see a short romantic montage of Bear and Nikki, they’re doing nondescript couple things. Cuddling on a bed. Cooking together. Laughing at nothing. Are these things that the real Nikki would be interested in? Do these tell us anything about her as a person? It becomes increasingly clear that Bear does not care about Nikki at all. He doesn’t want to date her because he admires her personality. He focuses on her as a status symbol, as I believe a lot of men do. It’s not about the woman herself, but about what being in a relationship with this woman conveys to other men. 

When the movie began, I remember seeing Bear and thinking “Do they really expect me to like this guy?” A few minutes later, I was overwhelmed with relief when I realized that the answer was no. In any other movie, his situation would be portrayed as a tragedy, or he would be treated sympathetically. Obsession pulls no punches, and is more than happy to show its audience just how much of a jerk Bear is. His lack of communication skills- something that would be portrayed as a charmingly relatable quirk in most other movies- is used here to betray his deep-seated sense of entitlement. He believes he is entitled to a relationship with Nikki, despite not being a particularly appealing partner. He believes he is entitled to a successful career as a restaurant critic, despite not having any skill or experience. He does not have communication skills because he believes that he doesn’t need them. Everything will just be handed to him anyways, because he clearly deserves it.

The most stomach-churning moments of the film come when Bear is all but forced to directly confront what he’s done, and chooses to willfully ignore it. In a phone call with One Wish Willow’s customer service number, the representative on the line offers to “put Nikki on”. He does, and we hear agonized screaming on the other end of the line. The real Nikki is still there somewhere. She is suffering. And Bear simply can’t bring himself to care. The scene that stuck out to me the most involves the real Nikki coming to, claiming that her wish-induced persona is asleep. She begs for Bear to kill her. Not only does he refuse, but he is offended that she would rather die than be with him. She refutes this by explaining that he was never truly with her, but he continues refusing to grant her mercy. Bear is not unaware of her suffering, he’s choosing to sweep it under the rug. He’d rather continue living in a phony relationship with a simulacrum that’s ruining his life than acknowledge that this woman is a human being!

Obsession exceeded my expectations. It’s a bitter, cynical look at modern romance, and offers the viewer plenty to sink their teeth into. If you’re looking for a thought-provoking film that’ll chill you to the bone, I couldn’t think of any better movie for you than Obsession.

Backrooms : Best Horror Movie Of The Year

By: Isabelle George

As someone with a disorder that impacts my memory, I’ve often thought about how I remember things, and what might be impacting that, and how the way I perceive my past impacts my present and future. Here’s a little challenge for you. Think about someone you haven’t seen in years. How would a conversation with them go if you ran into them today? What version of them exists in your memory? How does your mind fill in the gaps? The fallibility of memory is something I spend a lot of time thinking about. It’s clear that writer-director Kane Parsons thinks a lot about it too. At just twenty years old, Parsons has hit the ground running with his debut film, Backrooms.

What are the Backrooms? They’re hard to explain. The concept originated in a 2019 4chan thread when an anonymous user created a backstory for an unsettling photograph of an empty room. Parsons created a series of short YouTube videos about the Backrooms in 2022, and these are what brought the idea to the mainstream. Or at least that’s what Wikipedia tells me. To be fully honest with you, I have no familiarity with The Backrooms. But even without any prior knowledge, I still found Backrooms to be compelling, and never had any difficulty understanding the plot. Don’t let the pre-existing lore scare you away, it’s not the kind of film that requires you to have extensive knowledge of the source material! If I can enjoy it, so can you!

The film portrays the Backrooms as a vast expanse of rooms. Some of them are empty, some of them contain corrupted versions of your own memories, some of them contain entities based on the memories of others. The film’s plot begins in the early ‘90s in Santa Clara. When furniture store owner Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) falls through a wall and discovers them, he begins an uphill battle with his therapist (Renate Reinsve), his coworkers (Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell), and himself. Clark’s wife kicked him out of the house after an argument, something that he constantly makes excuses for. Near the climax of the movie, Mary lambasts him for this, shouting “Nothing’s ever your fault, is it?” Even then, he continues to make excuses. He insists that it’s “just how he’s wired”. You can see why a man like Clark would embrace the Backrooms. He can live comfortably in a warped memory. It’s a world where he never has to change. 

One of my favorite things about Backrooms is the way it plays with sound and images. There are several moments where the screen takes on the style of a grainy handheld camera. When Clark shows the Backrooms to his coworkers, Kat and Bobby, they bring along a video camera. The film clearly has a lot of fun with these moments. The scene that stuck out the most to me involves Clark hearing Kat call his name and setting the camera down. She can see him, but he is unable to see her. As they speak, something moves the camera, and Kat screams. We cannot see her, or what she is reacting to, but I found it to be the most effective scare in the film.

The use of sound is equally masterful. I don’t know if Parsons has read the works of theorist and composer Michel Chion, but several moments in the movie reminded me of his writing. In Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, Chion explains a concept called acousmatic sound- a sound that is heard without its source being seen. When the source of a sound is not shown, it intensifies the power of that sound in the audience’s minds. Backrooms takes this concept and absolutely goes to town with it. For most of the runtime, the audience is not shown the monster. We’re kept in suspense by being given little tidbits- we’ll see a silhouette, or hear its footsteps in another room, or see a character’s reaction to seeing it. This really did scare me! How did I feel about the monster itself? Well, that’s a whole different can of worms.

To me, there was only one issue with the film- the monster. As I said before, the buildup to the monster’s reveal is extremely effective. However, when we finally see it… I won’t spoil anything, but it’s a little silly. As soon as the monster was shown to us, I felt like all the tension and suspense had deflated. This doesn’t make it a bad movie, of course, but I just think that Backrooms would be a lot more effective if the monster was never shown in its entirety. As H.P. Lovecraft famously said, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”. Black Christmas, one of my all-time favorite horror movies, utilizes this very well. Each time a murder is committed, it’s depicted from a POV shot. We see the killer in silhouette, and we hear him over the phone, but we never see his face. In another scene, where one of his victims is discovered, we do not see her body. We see a distraught search party reacting to it, but the audience is left to fill in the blanks. No onscreen scare will ever be more frightening than what you can come up with in your own mind.

Despite the climax feeling a bit unsatisfying, I still absolutely adored Backrooms. Whether you’ve been a fan since day one or you’ve never even heard of it, you’re bound to get something out of this movie. If you love horror, you’ll love Backrooms.