Hokum review – Adam Scott dour and grumpy in enjoyably eerie rural horror

A writer’s retreat to the remote Irish hotel in which his parents spent their honeymoon brings him face-to-face with all manner of creepy goings-on in a gruesome and eccentric black-comic shocker Adam Scott has an unexpectedly dark, unsympathetic character to play in this black-comic supernatural horror which thumps you with some pretty efficient jump scares. He plays Ohm, a successful American writer brooding over the brutally nihilistic ending to his latest novel; he is also lonely, sliding into alcoholism and clearly agonised by some unacknowledged pain in his personal life. Ohm decides the time is right to take the ashes of his dead parents – which he has kept for years – and scatter them in the one place he knows they were happy, and where he perhaps hopes to siphon off some postdated happiness for himself. This is a run-down hotel in remote, rural Ireland where his mum and dad spent their honeymoon. Arriving in this picturesque but faintly disturbing place, where he is the only...

The Innocent review – enjoyably French romcom heist caper

A lonely young widower is drawn into a dangerous plot to pilfer caviar and negotiates pleasingly barmy plot twists

With his fourth feature directing, mop-haired actor-director Louis Garrel puts a French stamp on the Hollywood heist movie. The Innocent is a screwball romcom-caper starring Garrel himself as a guy who gets caught up in a plot to pilfer a job lot of caviar (you don’t get more Gallic than that). It’s a broad, enjoyable, lighthearted movie with a fair few not-insignificant plot holes, but a genuinely surprising storyline that keeps you guessing to the end.

Garrel plays Abel, a young widower, just 32, who’s been emotionally dormant since his wife died. Though he is is close to his mum, Sylvie, a charismatic, warm chaotic actor played with fizzing comic energy by Anouk Grinberg. Sylvie has a thing for bad guys; her latest squeeze is suave thief Michel (Roschdy Zem). They met in prison when she was teaching an acting workshop and he was banged up for a five-stretch. Head over heels, they get married and after Michel is released, open a florist together.

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