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The beginning of May is a strange time to watch a horror movie \u2014\u00a0and an even stranger time for a film studio to release one. Though spooky season<\/a> has long been absent, Neon\u2019s new horror film, \u201cHokum,\u201d made its way to theaters on May 1. In the springtime, it felt contradictory to enter a dark, claustrophobic theater with the intention of getting frightened by a film set in October. Maybe I hoped the sunny outdoors would save me from a potential scare inside my cinema seat. Regardless of my preconceptions \u2014 and perhaps hubris \u2014 I quickly <\/strong>came to realize that scares can come at any time of the year.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHokum\u201d follows a disgruntled, depressed American author, Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott), who travels to Ireland in order to scatter his parents\u2019 ashes. During his visit, he stays at an antiquated hotel which, according to staff, traps a folkloric witch<\/a> in its locked honeymoon suite. When Fiona (Florence Ordesh), an employee of the hotel, goes missing, Ohm decides to break in and search the haunted hotel room in order to solve the mystery of her disappearance.<\/p>\n Soon Ohm finds himself trapped in the honeymoon suite, where his goal of finding Fiona is quickly replaced with surviving the night. <\/p>\n In spite of the movie\u2019s deceptively simple premise, \u201cHokum\u201d is much more than meets the eye. Although it uses Irish folklore as inspiration, the film does not rely on paranormal elements as its sole source of horror. As Ohm spends the night playing cat and mouse with the sinister presence haunting him, he also finds himself unravelling the mystery behind <\/strong>Fiona\u2019s disappearance. In a startling turn of events, her disappearance ends up having <\/strong>more to do with the hotel staff than it does with the entity lurking in the suite. Somehow, the child-luring witch that drags her victims into Hell is not the prime antagonist in \u201cHokum\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n