Editor’s Note: Freeline Media movie critic Mike Fried, knows there are fans of psychological horror, and he’s discovered a new gem in that fine genre. Read on!
By MIKE FRIED
Hokum
****
Damian McCarthy is slowly becoming the king of the slow burn psychological horror genre and this film, his best thus far, is no different.
Ohm Baumann is a horror author struggling to finish a trilogy. He goes to the hotel his parents honeymooned at in Ireland in order to lay their ashes. Ohm is abrupt to all of the hotel staff — a real asshole. Except, that is, to Fiona the bartender. He wants to see the honeymoon suite, where his parents stayed, but it is locked off because it is supposedly haunted by a witch that the owner, Cob, trapped inside.
He tries to hang himself and when he gets out of the hospital he goes back to the hotel which is closing for the season. He wants to thank Fiona but is told she is missing. He gets one piece of advice: “You can fuck off to the airport while your face still looks like your passport picture.” Well, he ignored this advice, otherwise we would have nothing more than a lousy 20-minute movie.
Thankfully, he did ignore the advice. This is a terrific movie. Not really a jump scare movie and no gore but, rather, a film imbued with atmosphere, with shadows and quick cuts. The movie is led by Adam Scott as Ohm but is also populated by a real bunch of characters. There’s Fiona, Mal the desk clerk, Fergal the groundskeeper and Jerry, the man with the sketchy past who lives in the woods by the hotel and who wants to help Ohm.
I normally don’t like movies that are shot in low light. Many movies use the technique and it often falls flat; but it totally works in this film. Even when there are lights on, the film is kind of dark as befits the creepy old hotel where the film takes place. This movie forces you to pay attention, thanks to Colm Hogan’s well-done cinematography.
Adam Scott is terrific as the brash American who believes he can do what he wants when he wants, and it’s that kind of attitude that gets him in a pickle.
Florence Ordesh, Peter Coonan, Michael Patric and David Wilmot are excellent as Fiona, Mal, Fergal and Jerry. They are all equally terrific and add a lot to the film, especially Jerry whose insistence on helping Ohm drives the plot to its conclusion.
And what really adds a lot to the film is the score by Joseph Bishara, a veteran horror film composer. It is low, menacing, creepy and basically everything you want in a horror movie score.
Damian McCarthy directed this with such confidence that one wonders when he is going to be lured by the big money for a studio film. Even without a lot of jump scares, this movie brings on the terrifying frights through well staged lighting effects, sound design and a terrific production design that are so much better than you’d expect on a $5 million budget. If this evil shit happened in my house, I’d be selling that fucker.
You don’t need to watch McCarthy’s two prior films Caveat (AMC+) or Oddity (Hulu/AMC+) before watching this film, but it gets you into the mindset for this film.
WATCH IT!
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.
