Tag: Adam Scott

[EXPRESSO] Hokum (2026) | Banshee Burner

Review confession time: i’m not familiar at all with Damian McCarthy as a director or otherwise, but i also didn’t do much research and i just trusted the very good general reception.

I’m glad i did, but let’s not skip steps.

Hokum is about Ohm, an american writer struggling to write the epilogue of his successful Conquistador book trilogy, that goes to Ireland in a hotel where his parents had their honeymoon, moved by the appeareance of the ghost of his mother, and there to lay to rest their ashes.

He decides to pass the night in the hotel in order to see if he could push past his writer’s block, while mostly being abrahasive and dismissive of the hotel staff (especially the old irish folklore about witches a local old man tells to some children) while also getting plastered, and things turn for the worse when he wakes up again, alive just because one of the staff found him hanging from his room ceiling in time…

It’s definitely a slow burner that does take its time, but with elegance, a great atmosphere, without really using jumpscares, but some really unsettling creepy apparations (the rabbit one is indeed some really creepy shit), and surprisingly this time around isn’t so much about a monster or old folklore repurposed to rappresent grief (though that obviously play a part), but an actual proper supernatural tales of horror and mystery old as the hills, that manages to actually have a compelling narrative that does play on multiple angles but also avoids having a twist that undoes or invalidates previous key scenes, the kind often done to play with expectations, just in order to win the guessing war with the audiences, regardless if it makes for a better movie or not.

Pretty good stuff, recommended.

[EXPRESSO] The Monkey (2025) | FAQING MONKY

After bringing about a Manson-esque supernatural horror with Longlegs, Oz Perkins is back with an adaptation of Stephen King’s short story The Monkey, about – indeed – a cursed mechanical wind-up toy monkey (no cimbals, but a good ol’ drum & stick set) that is able kill off people via convenient incidents, found by a couple of brothers as it belonged to their father, who ran off home years ago. They find out there’s something about the monkey toy and the deaths that seem to happened with eerie timing, so they decide to hide it away.

25 years later, mysterious deaths start happening again in the brother’s hometown of Casco, Maine (ah yes, the inland, Jessica Fletcher-free part of it), forcing the two siblings, whom has grown strangers to each other, to settle that dark secret from their past….

And boy is this one a good time, as it goes for a deliberately over the top comedy horror tone, which works splendidly with the very blasè existentialist dark humour, and doesn’t waste time trying to make more complex or apply “logic” to a concept that defies it, because the idea of a djinn/genie that can basically dish out death without having to twist around the words of the people making the wishes doesn’t make sense either.

The toy monkey won’t care what you think (or want) either way.

The characters and exchanges are delightfully over the top in some way or another (while reserving some time for more serious, emotional moments), as are the many gory deaths, as gruesome as they are funny, with people exploding into pieces, torn apart by lawnmowers, being brutally impaled via a series of absurd little accidents, the effects are great too, and it doesn’t overstays its welcome by padding itself out.

Quite fun, recommended.