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

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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...
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Big swings, big misses and big deals: what happened at this year’s Sundance?

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The 40th edition of the independent film festival saw some multimillion-dollar deals but also had attendees question if there was a drop in quality

The high bar raised by last year’s Sundance film festival had caused many to feel a little underwhelmed by this year’s edition, a commonly tweeted and spoken concern over just whether this year could truly boast a major breakout movie. Twelve months prior, the workplace thriller Fair Play, erotic drama Passages, nifty horror Talk to Me, romcom Rye Lane, timely documentary 20 Days in Mariupol, mother-son music tale Flora and Son and decade-spanning romance Past Lives caused waves that continued for the next year, an unusually robust lineup, fittingly given that it was Sundance’s big in-person comeback.

It was a slightly more muted affair over in Utah this year, some attributing a weaker lineup to 2023’s dual strikes, which prevented many productions from going ahead, but there were still enough gems amid the murk and a promising raft of major multimillion deals. Because while the strikes may have allegedly affected the roster, they also had a definite impact on the thirst of buyers, in frantic need of films to help repair lighter-than-usual release schedules. There might not have been anything as buzzy as Past Lives but this year’s crop of films continued to edge away from a reliance on A-listers to draw attention, a relief after a period of limp, star-led projects taking slots away from smaller, more deserving fare.

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