Between the two horror films out this month that both happen to be directed by Irish filmmakers, we know which one we prefer. ‘Hokum,’ the third feature from Damian McCarthy after ‘Oddity’ (2024) and ‘Caveat’ (2020), is the best horror movie we’ve seen so far this year, a slow-burn combination of folklore, mystery, and ghost story that oozes atmosphere and gives you goosebumps at every possible opportunity.
Set in a haunted hotel in a remote region of Ireland, peppered with truly shocking moments, suffocating darkness and eerie silences, ‘Hokum’ confirms that McCarthy is low-key becoming a modern master of the genre, while Adam Scott continues to establish his dramatic bona fides with a textured performance of a difficult lead character.
Story and Direction
(L to R) Adam Scott and director Damian McCarthy talk ‘Hokum’.
‘Hokum’ begins, surprisingly, in a desert, as a bedraggled conquistador and a young boy search hopelessly for a treasure, the map to its location sealed in a bottle that there is only one way to open. We quickly learn, however, that this is the final scene in a new novel being written by Ohm Bauman (Scott), a successful author who nevertheless seems deeply haunted; he sits alone at his laptop in his empty, darkened house, and right from the first moment it’s made clear that apparitions from the past have found their way into his life.
Still unsure of his ending, Bauman heads to a remote part of Ireland with his parents’ ashes, intent on scattering them around a tree in the woods near the Bilberry Hotel, where they stayed for their honeymoon. The hotel itself is peppered with odd characters, from the bellhop who aspires to be a novelist himself to the owner who terrifies children with tales of a local witch to Jerry, a vagrant who lives in the woods and drinks a special concoction of goat’s milk and mushrooms because it opens his mind to whatever exists beyond our veil of reality.
While Ohm himself has trouble believing that, he soon learns that the hotel’s honeymoon suite has been closed for decades because, according to the employees, there is a witch trapped up there. And after two significant, tragic incidents – one involving Ohm himself, and the other the disappearance of someone in the hotel – events conspire to put Ohm on a path that will lead him into that suite and whatever secrets it holds.
‘Hokum’ is many things: a character study of a man deeply, almost irretrievably, burdened with guilt and loss; a murder mystery; and a folk horror tale steeped in the legends and history of the Irish countryside. There are points throughout the film where McCarthy seems to have a spot of trouble meshing those three narrative strands together into a cohesive whole, but he nevertheless forges right through those moments with his brilliant control of the film’s tone and atmosphere – from the bits of humor sprinkled throughout to the undeniably frightening mix of well-placed jump scares and quieter horror.
Florence Ordesh in ‘Hokum’. Photo: Neon.
Working with production designer Til Frohlich and cinematographer Colm Hogan, McCarthy creates a palpable aura of decay and dread, particularly once the action moves into that terrible honeymoon suite. From the dim lighting to the little statues scattered around that seem to stare right through you, the room belongs right up there with Hill House, Bly, and the Overlook as one of the most viscerally unsettling locales ever shown on film.
But the filmmakers’ expertise extends beyond that room as well, making nearly every corner of the Bilberry terrifying in its own way and cranking up that terror as the story descends into the hotel’s long-unused basement. The imagery that McCarthy conjures up is genuinely skin-freezing, and he also doesn’t bother to explain much of it, letting the nightmare logic of the story do the heavy lifting as it should.
By the time ‘Hokum’ reaches its climax and then comes full circle with a poignant coda, you may well feel like you’ve watched something of a genre masterpiece, which never once loses sight of its humanity even as its characters face the inhuman and the inexplicable.
Cast and Performances
Adam Scott in ‘Hokum’. Photo: Neon.
The cast is uniformly excellent in ‘Hokum,’ with each of the characters getting something to do even if some are not as well drawn as others (special mention to David Wilmot as the spaced-out but empathetic Jerry). But this is primarily Adam Scott’s show, and the ‘Severance’ star – who’s been moving gradually into more serious roles – grabs it head-on.
Ohm is not a likable person at first – he’s rude, dismissive, and insulting, and in one scene even intentionally burns the bellhop’s hand to make a point – but Scott does a lot with facial expressions, physical movements, and his line delivery, eventually allowing the audience into the character’s tortured psyche just as the character begins to find his humanity again. It’s a subtle but well-played arc, seasoned with Ohm’s genuine terror and desperation as his ordeal becomes graver.
Final Thoughts
A scene from ‘Hokum’. Photo: Neon.
If our only real criticism of ‘Hokum’ is that the movie tries to do a little too much, that’s still a compliment in a way. This is the kind of horror film we like best, with the right combination of genuine scares and jolts and proper attention paid to character development and mood.
If the year’s other horror offerings have been largely disappointing so far, ‘Hokum’ is here to save the day – and hopefully provide you with a few sleepless nights long after seeing it.
‘Hokum’ receives a score of 90 out of 100.
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What is the plot of ‘Hokum’?
When novelist Ohm Bauman retreats to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, he is consumed by tales of a witch haunting the honeymoon suite. Disturbing visions and a shocking disappearance force him to confront dark corners of his past.
Premiering in 2023 at the Venice and Toronto film festivals before being scooped up by Netflix for a reported $20 million, ‘Hit Man’ – kind of like the recent ‘Challengers,’ but very different – is a breath of fresh air: an adult-oriented genre mash-up of rom-com, crime thriller and comedy that’s all the more astounding because it’s partially based on a true story.
Directed by Richard Linklater (‘School of Rock’) with a verve that’s been missing from some of his recent work, and starring Glen Powell in another star-making turn as a humdrum academic who rediscovers his passion and confidence by pretending to be a smoldering assassin, ‘Hit Man’ is smart, sensual, character-driven, and highly entertaining.
Story and Direction
(L to R) Adria Arjona as Madison, director and co-writer Richard Linkletter, co-writer Glen Powell as Gary Johnson, and director of photography Shane F. Kelly. Photo: Brian Rondel / Courtesy of Netflix.
‘Hit Man’ is based partially on an article of the same name, written by Skip Hollingsworth, that appeared in Texas Monthly magazine in 2001. It told the story of Gary Johnson, a college professor who moonlighted with the New Orleans police department first as a surveillance tech and then as an undercover agent himself, part of a sting operation set up to nab people looking to hire a hitman to off someone who had become an irritant in their lives.
What Johnson discovered is also what his screen counterpart, played by Glen Powell, discovers: that he has a genuine knack for not just undercover work, but inhabiting different personalities according to what he thinks the target will respond to. As the film begins, Johnson – lonely, divorced, boring his students and, whether he wants to admit it or not, boring himself – is thrust into his first undercover role when the usual front man, Jasper (a slippery Austin Amelio), is benched after beating on some alleged perps. Much to his surprise, Gary gets into the ‘tough guy’ persona he comes up with on the spot – and the head of his team (Retta) is pleased enough to recommend he keep doing it.
As Gary moves forward, he begins donning different costumes for each sting: in one of the movie’s funniest ongoing gags, they reference everyone from Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman in ‘American Psycho’ to Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh from ‘No Country for Old Men.’ But while disguised as a cool, suave, and yes, sexy assassin named Ron (Ron wears black tank tops under shirts open halfway down his chest, his hair swept back, while Gary dresses in flannels, khakis, and glasses, his hair flopping over his face), Gary meets a woman named Madison (Adria Arjona), who is looking to have her abusive husband killed.
Gary, as “Ron,” talks Madison out of going forward with her plan, surprising both himself and the members of his team listening in. But no one is more surprised than Gary when he – or rather, “Ron” – reconnects with a newly-separated Madison and begins a steamy relationship with her. From that point on, the story takes multiple twists, and no one – least of all Gary, who is finding it increasingly difficult to figure out where he ends and “Ron” begins – is exactly what they seem.
Linklater directs all this with a sure hand, confident in the material, the characters, and his actors but adding a little flash here and there with a comic montage or two. What works best about ‘Hit Man’ is its unpredictability: the movie shifts from romance to crime caper to psychological exploration without ever feeling like it’s taken too jarring a turn, which is a credit again both to the balancing of tone in both Linklater’s direction and the script by him and Powell.
There is perhaps one false note at the end of the picture – a bit of moral ambiguity that is not quite resolved – but in the final analysis, it works within the context of the rest of the story and, if anything, adds a nice touch of subversion to a movie that already lightly subverts some well-worn genre tropes.
Glen Powell has obviously been around for a minute (he’s worked with Linklater several times already), but his breakout work in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ and his leading man turn in last year’s ‘Anyone But You’ has positioned him as one of Hollywood’s next big things. Frankly, he deserves it: ‘Hit Man’ features Powell at his most winning, with Gary a complex, compelling, and attractive protagonist who is empathetic and believable from the get-go even as his personal situation becomes more trying. His evolution from nerdy, existentially fuzzy Gary to confident, even swaggering Ron – and then fusing the two from there – is organic and expertly portrayed.
He and Adria Arjona have instant, off-the-chart chemistry from the start, an ingredient that helps make their love scenes in ‘Hit Man’ more sensual than some of the other screen romance we’ve seen in recent times. We last saw Arjona in a thankless role in 2022’s forgettable ‘Morbius,’ and here she’s much more alluring, sparkling, and funnier. But the character of Madison is somewhat undercooked: she goes from a relationship in which she has absolutely no agency to one in which…she kind of has no agency, waiting in her apartment for “Ron” to come around so they can get busy. There are some subtle reveals to the character later that help flesh Madison out, but she doesn’t come quite as fully to life as Gary.
The supporting cast is gold, led by Retta as the no-nonsense Claudette and Austin Amelio as the calculating, untrustworthy Jasper. And let’s not forget to mention the parade of suspects that Gary gets locked up through the sting operation – sure, some of them are no more than easily recognizable archetypes, but they each get a funny moment or two.
Light and sure on its feet, ‘Hit Man’ also touches on some heavy questions: Who are we and how many different layers are there to our personalities? Are we really the best version of ourselves and if not, how do we get there? These musings are sprinkled liberally through the film, but the philosophical underpinnings don’t slow down what is still essentially a romp, bolstered by well-drawn characters and a powerhouse lead turn. If a movie like ‘Hit Man’ finds it harder to exist in movie theaters, the industry is truly having an existential crisis of its own.
‘Hit Man’ receives 8 out of 10 stars.
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What is the plot of ‘Hit Man’?
New Orleans college professor Gary Johnson (Glen Powell) moonlights for the police department as a fake hitman, using multiple disguises to catch people looking to have someone in their lives killed off. But after he talks a beautiful woman (Adria Arjona) out of ordering a hit on her husband — while disguised as a smoldering hitman named Ron — Gary gets caught in an identity crisis that leads him to wonder just who he really is.
(L to R) Retta, Adria Arjona, Glen Powell and director Richard Linklater for ‘Hit Man’. Photo: Netflix.
‘Hit Man’ is a new comic thriller coming to Netflix on June 7th after a limited theatrical run on May 24th. Directed by Richard Linklater (‘Boyhood’) and co-written by Linklater and star Glen Powell (‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ ‘Anyone But You’), the film is based on a 2001 Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth about a man named Gary Johnson, a New Orleans college professor who moonlights with the Big Easy’s police department as a surveillance tech expert.
In the film, as in real life, the unassuming Johnson (Powell) is working with a team of detectives conducting a sting operation to catch people who want to hire a hitman to kill a spouse, business partner, or anyone else they want to get rid of. When Johnson must suddenly pose as the fake hitman, he discovers he has a knack for it – as well as a talent for disguising himself as a different type of person for every potential customer.
But while posing as a suave, cool, and sexy assassin named Ron, Gary meets a woman named Madison (Adria Arjona, ‘Andor’), who wants to off her abusive husband. “Ron” talks her out of it, and soon he and Madison begin an affair of their own — with Madison not knowing who “Ron” really is — while Gary finds himself entangled in an escalating combination of identity crisis and deception.
Co-starring Retta (‘Parks and Recreation’), Austin Amelio (‘The Walking Dead’), and Sanjay Rao, ‘Hit Man’ is a crackling, inspired mix of noir, crime thriller, and rom-com that’s hard to pin down to one genre and even more difficult to believe is based on a real person. Powell, Linklater, Arjona, and Retta all recently participated in an online press conference for the film, and here are 10 things we learned there, edited for clarity and length.
1. Glen Powell Discovered the Story During The Pandemic
Glen Powell stars in ‘Hit Man’. Photo: Netflix.
Glen Powell says it was early in the pandemic when he first discovered the true story of Gary Johnson and was fascinated by it.
Glen Powell: Immediately, it was so clear there was such a compelling character there. If you look at the real-life Gary Johnson, he was a psychology professor who actually moonlighted with the police department, did AV equipment, was an ornithologist, Zen Buddhist. It was just such an incredible character piece, but I didn’t really know where it went. All I knew is that there was a fascinating guy here, and they called him the Laurence Olivier of fake hitmen because he approached the job differently. Instead of just becoming the hitman for hire across from someone who is trying to kill their husband or their wife or their business partner, he embodied their fantasy of what a fake hitman is, because hitmen don’t exist. So he took this skillset to a whole new level and started putting on these disguises and all these different things. It was just a fascinating idea…So I called up Rick and I said, I just read this amazing article called ‘Hit Man.’ And Rick said, “Yeah, I read that article when you were in 7th grade.”
2. Powell Helped Linklater Crack the Story of ‘Hit Man’
(L to R) Adria Arjona as Madison, director and co-writer Richard Linkletter, co-writer Glen Powell as Gary Johnson, and director of photography Shane F. Kelly. Photo: Brian Rondel / Courtesy of Netflix.
Richard Linklater says he had been thinking about making a movie out of ‘Hit Man’ for years but that working with Glen Powell finally unlocked the story.
Richard Linklater: I was so excited to get this call from Glen because that story had been kicking around in my head. I had talked to Skip, I had had a couple of meetings on it over the years, but it didn’t really work. It didn’t really work as a film because there was this repetition. It didn’t really go anywhere. So I told this to Glen [and] he said, ‘Well, let’s talk about it.” I was like, “Oh, wow, it’s the pandemic. What else are we going to do?” So talk we did, every day for a while. We would just have hours of conversations. And Glen kind of loosened the logjam I was in. He said, “Well, what if we deviate? Why do we have to stick to the facts?” So once that floodgate opened, we were off to the races. We just started having these great ideas, and the last two thirds of the movie kind of comes out of that. The genres kick in and it becomes this thrill ride. But it was grounded in Gary Johnson’s life reality…[he] was a real person, [with] a real job, the strangest occupation anyone could ever have.
3. One Paragraph in the ‘Hit Man’ Article Became Half the Movie
In the movie, Gary Johnson meets with a woman who wants to put out a hit on her abusive husband. Gary, disguised as a suave assassin named Ron, talks her out of it, persuading her to take control of her life instead. The two later begin their own relationship, which drives the second half of the film.
Glen Powell: The story wasn’t revealing itself in a natural way, but then there was this paragraph about this woman that the real-life Gary Johnson sat down with. She was approaching him to get him to kill her husband. And instead of sending her to jail like he did with everybody else, he didn’t believe that she was capable of this thing. He sort of believed in the best of her and talked her out of it. It was the first time that ever happened, and there was a relationship that developed from that. But all of a sudden the article just sort of moves on, and Rick and I were like, well, what if we pull at that thread? We have so many questions about what that relationship is and how they reengaged with each other. Did he stay as the fake hitman? So really that was a big breaking point because that was when we started thinking about, [what] if he got stuck in this identity as this fake hitman?
4. Not Just Another Femme Fatale
Adria Arjona stars in ‘Hit Man’. Photo: Netflix.
Adria Arjona’s character, Madison, reveals more layers to her personality as the film goes on, which is something Arjona wanted to happen.
Adria Arjona: She’s a woman that’s coming from a traumatic relationship, this weird kind of dark relationship, and she’s desperate for reinvention. I think we all do that in life, where we’re all always trying to find sort of a different version of ourselves. She’s sort of playing that. She’s kind of looking at Ron and going, what would Ron like? What would a bad boy like Ron want in a woman? So I don’t see Madison as a femme fatale. I see a woman trying to play the illusion of a femme fatale. That was really fun to play with. I just had so much fun crafting that with them, and it felt a little bit more grounded. That was something that I could do. I wasn’t interested in just being the femme fatale.
5. Retta Didn’t Find Out She Had Her Role For, Like, Forever
Retta stars in ‘Hit Man’. Photo: Netflix.
The ‘Parks and Recreation’ star auditioned for the role of Claudette, leader of the undercover New Orleans police sting operation for which Gary first does surveillance and then acts as a fake hitman.
Retta: I got an audition from my agent and I was like, oh, it’s Rick and Glen. I didn’t know Glen wrote. So I was like, “Look at you, fancy.” So I put myself on tape and didn’t hear anything for a long time. Then Glen and I happened to be at [a party] and Glen is talking to me as if I was hired. He was like, “We’re going to make that movie. We’re going to have so much fun.” I was like, “Dude, did I get the job?” I literally went home that night and texted my manager and I was like, did someone not email me to let me know that I booked this gig? But I know Glen from 10 years ago; we did a movie together [‘Sex Ed’]. I know Rick from 20 years ago; we did a pilot together. So I know them personality-wise, and I was like, “Oh, this is going to be a very calm environment.”
6. How Retta’s Role Changed From Claude to Claudette
As is often the case, the role of Claudette was supposed to be a man (Claude), but Retta took it over with few changes and not a lot of research.
Retta: It was written originally as a guy. So I just chose to be me if I were a detective. Those are the choices that I made. I was me saying those lines as a detective in that space. It wasn’t much more than that. I didn’t study anything. We met some detectives that told us how things go, but that was about it for me. I don’t watch a lot of true crime. I listened to some podcasts and they used to scare me, so I stopped. I like to problem-solve. So that’s why I was like, I feel like he said this, so I feel like we need to do that.
7. Richard Linklater Was Very Happy to Work With Glen Powell Again
(L to R) Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, director Richard Linklater and Sanjay Rao for ‘Hit Man’. Photo: Netflix.
Richard Linklater previously directed Glen Powell in 2016’s ‘Everybody Wants Some!!’ with the latter playing Walt “Finn” Finnegan.
Richard Linklater: Kind of the greatest thing about getting to do this over the years and decades is when you work with someone you like and if the planets align, you get to work with ’em again. It’s just wonderful. With Glen, I think our big breakthrough was 10 years ago we were shooting ‘Everybody Wants Some!!’ Glen came in and auditioned. I had a part that I thought would be very difficult to cast. He’s an athlete, yet he’s really smart and charming, and he’s kind of the team intellectual. I was like, oh, this is a small little target, who’s going to do this? I’d known Glen for about 10 years at this time. I’d worked with him when he was young, like a high school kid…But he walked in the room and was this guy. I was like, when did Glen become so amazing? He’s so smart. He’s so charming. I was just seeing this force of nature. I was like, oh my God, he solved my problem. I got my guy to play this thing. But we had such a great creative time on that…when he called me with this, it was off to the races creatively, because he is just fun to work with. He’s funny and smart and a great collaborator.
8. Glen Powell to Richard Linklater: Right Back Atcha, Pal!
Glen Powell explains why he enjoys collaborating with Linklater and would like to keep it going.
Glen Powell: The wonderful thing about writing with Rick is that your conversations become wonderful pages and friendship and work blend together in this kind of effortless way. It’s what I think makes him magical as a filmmaker. He’s never attacking a story. He sort of lets the story reveal itself. And when he casts people, he really allows them to come into the process. There’s sort of this wonderful room for life that he gives everything. I think it makes that ecosystem very different and very fruitful. So I’d love to keep doing this till our fingers just freeze up on the keyboard.
During one crucial, showstopping scene late in the movie, Gary (Powell) guides Madison (Arjona) through a fake argument by texting her what to say and how to act, even as the other members of his police team are listening to them talk.
Adria Arjona: We spoke about that scene so much between the three of us. It was that scene that we just never gave up on. There were so many different iterations of how we might do it… So when we first heard that first “action,” all of a sudden I start seeing Glen kind of guide me through this scene in such a seamless way. My job really was to follow his lead as much as I could. It was one of those scenes where we didn’t stop looking at each other. I looked at every gesture that he did, and it triggered something in me. So I feel like it’s a scene where teamwork was so important and so crucial. I don’t think I’ve done that before in any movie. You aspire to be the best listener you can. I mean, that’s what acting is all about. But everyone has their own motives. You’re playing your own characters. For this scene, we had to be symbiotic for it to work. It was also so much fun.
10. What a Surprise: The Studios Didn’t Get ‘Hit Man’
According to Powell, no Hollywood studios were interested in backing ‘Hit Man.’ The movie was financed and filmed independently, then played at the Venice and Toronto film festivals in 2023 – with Netflix purchasing it at the latter for a reported $20 million.
Glen Powell: We took this movie out and no one got it. We took this script out. We were so proud of it. We were so excited about what it said about identity and passion. We thought it was so universal and exciting. It was going to be an audience movie. And then it was just crickets. No one got it. Nobody responded to it because I don’t think it fits into one box. We were trying to do something original, and I think the town always wanted it to be something else. I think what I’m just really proud of is we got to make this movie independently, and make the movie that we wanted to make. It doesn’t subscribe to any genre. It doesn’t fit into any box. I think the reason it’s a really great audience movie, and the reason people are responding to it, is you can’t get out in front of it. You can’t predict it because it’s all the things.
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What is the plot of ‘Hit Man’?
A part-time staffer (Glen Powell) with the New Orleans Police Department stumbles into the role of posing undercover as a reliable hitman with the goal of arresting those trying to hire him. He discovers he has a talent for theatrically matching the expectations of his suspects with often-humorous costumes, accents, and mannerisms, which makes him especially adept at his work. He meets with a woman (Adria Arjona) who wants a hitman to kill her husband, but he falls for her at first sight and saves her from getting entrapped. Later she bamboozles her way into his life and murders her husband for the insurance money. The story explores how far will a person go for infatuation, love, and personal happiness.
