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Film Curious is a movie review podcast that takes a step back from the constant media consumption to discover and ponder great films across genres and time. A podcast where we let our intrigue guide us and are not afraid to explore whatever films pique our interest.
To all you film lovers, casual theatergoers, at-home movie watchers, and streaming scrollers out there, think of Film Curious as your gateway into any and every kind of movie. One that doesn’t gatekeep but doesn’t shy away from respect for the craft either. So, take a dip, the water’s fine…
Hey guys, welcome to Film Curious
Ashley here.
This episode Pete's giving you a non
spoiler review of the film
hokum, as he was able to see
a limited release of it before it hit
theaters wide this past weekend.
And it looks like we've got ourselves
a little horror
movie streak going from last week
with Lee Cronin's The Mummy.
So catch that review if you haven't yet.
We had a lot of fun with it and as always,
thanks for tuning in and we hope you
enjoy.
I did get to see one other thing.
This is actually a midnight screening
at the Florida Film Festival,
which was held at the NZ in Theater
in Maitland, near Orlando,
which sailed Lando.
It is the follow up to Damien McCarthy's
oddity.
It is called hokum, which is a,
I'll say, folk horror.
Film which Adam Scott,
who is not playing an Adam Scott
that he always plays, which is nice.
He gets to kind of break away from that,
and he's actually done a really good job
of that lately,
being able to to stretch out with that.
But it is a in the simplest
and most narrow of terms,
you know, a haunted hotel film
that, again, takes place in Ireland,
has some,
has a lot of roots in folk horror.
And I liked oddity a bunch.
I thought it had a great tone, great
atmosphere, some really good scares,
and at the end of the film of oddity,
it it leaned into this thing of a hotel
of a bellman,
like a haunted bellman and hokum.
I think if I watched them back to back,
they tie into each other in one way
or the other.
But you don't need to have seen oddity
at all.
It's nothing like that.
I enjoyed this movie a bunch.
I got to see it with a packed theater,
and a number of moments
had people reacting.
And as someone who doesn't
get very scared at movies
nowadays because you've seen so many,
you know there's a lot of so many tricks.
But man, oh man.
What are two moments?
One in particular really got a good,
you know, out of me.
And it wasn't a character drops
a lot of glass bowls in a hallway.
That loud noise kind of nonsense.
It was a yeah, it wasn't like
a jump scare, but I jumped from the scare.
So that was nice. Welcome.
That back is a thing there may be,
and I don't want to get into any,
any spoilers on it.
There is a narrative bit that was also in
oddity that is repeated here in hokum.
I, I just hope that in the whatever
next movie
Damian McCarthy makes,
he doesn't do it again.
And I can't I can't get into that
without possibly spoiling.
But I will say, if you pay enough
attention, nothing's going to be like.
Oh, I can't believe you know Abby.
Or see, like, it's not that type of movie.
That's not what it's doing.
Horror has had a really great run
recently of,
you know, it's scary, but it's the
emotional journey of the character,
which has always been the most.
We go back to even the classic
like The Exorcist,
like it's about the emotional journey
of those characters. Right?
That's that's what makes them good. Yeah.
And so it makes you keep
coming back on these.
And there's another one here.
You know, Adam Scott
has a, you know, a path to walk.
And while you will probably figure out
a portion of that pass
within the first five, ten minutes,
I'm not sure if the movie is aware
that you're that you can easily
figure that out in the five, ten minutes.
That's always a question of,
you know, to the individual,
I just happen to have a occasionally
a good nose for like, oh, well,
that probably is because of this.
And that will lead to that.
And that was all that all lined up
with what happened in the film,
but it didn't take away from it at all.
Check out oddity
if you haven't yet as a nice little,
you know, lean into that world
and check out hokum.
I really I really quite enjoyed it.
I hadn't seen either.
So maybe when it does full release
I'll be able to catch it in theaters.
Yeah.
But I, I
I've gotten better in the last dad day,
I guess
five years about watching horror movies.
I'm not the I like, I enjoy them,
I can thoroughly enjoy them,
but I'm one of those that,
like an image, will stick in my mind
and the person stays in the corner
when I go to the bathroom at night
sort of thing.
So like I, I tread lightly
and I watch them early enough in the day.
I try to not like delve into it
later and I less.
I'm like fully addicted to whatever I'm
watching or it's really engaging me. But
that's typically like the these limited
horror series these days, you know.
But yeah, I'll watch it.
But like, I always have to,
like kind of pump myself up a little bit
to be like, I can, I can do this.
I mean, most of the time I can handle it.
Like, I don't really get that scared.
You never strike me as someone like that.
That's so funny.
But, like.
Have we ever watched a horror movie
together?
A bunch tons, right? Yeah, I felt like.
Yeah, like, I feel like I've watched
a lot of horror movies with you, so.
No, I. Hide it. Well,
like.
I mean, that's my secret.
I hide all of my emotions pretty well.
Unless it's secret, cap.
Yeah, unless it's a happy.
I'm having fun that I.
I think that too, but.
I'm just not the person you know, Pete.
I just know total mask.
It's always the opposites.
Was the opposites.
No, I usually handle that's.
The thing is,
I think it's more of like the suspense of.
Will this scare me more than, like,
I'm actually scared while watching it
because most of the time
I find some of the, the, the actual,
the scary parts to kind of make me laugh,
but in the like, I don't find it funny.
It's just like,
oh my god, that's terrifying reaction.
I kind of laugh
at like how scared it made me.
Yeah, I have that too.
I there's a lot of times with a,
I hate that I can even come up with this,
but like number of times
I've been in a hospital,
like waiting to hear
or getting examined by a doctor
and I'll start laughing.
Oh yeah. I'm just like.
It's like nervous laughter or something,
but it's what my body
falls back on is.
Yeah, I think it's. Laughing it through.
Yeah, I think, yeah,
I make a joke out of it.
If it's funny, it's not as scary, right?
I think that, yeah,
that might be the reaction.
I'm so you know what?
Don't watch a trailer for this, guys.
I gotta say, I just watched
I did see a trailer for this movie before,
so unrelated.
Nothing is probably spoiled,
but there's a couple of visual cues
in the trailer where going empty.
Don't don't bother.
Just just check out the movie.
That's that's my suggestion
as well for hokum.
I wonder how other people reacted to it.
I felt this has been the gods.
It's strange and this doesn't spoil
anything in Holcomb,
but I've seen this strange reaction
to people.
It's become like a meme, actually,
where they're like, oh,
this movie starts with devil worship.
And guess what?
In the end, it's devil worship. I'm like,
yeah.
And so that the what?
The story is cyclical I don't what.
Yeah.
Like that's a.
Problem
because yeah because they're like oh it's
you know, it's exactly what they said
it was in the beginning.
I'm like, yeah, well not everything
has to be a twist, right?
Like like it's not.
You know, like going back to.
The seal. It's like. Yeah.
You know. Yeah.
Go moving through the story.
I have heard that in reference
to like hereditary
and, What what what. No.
Like, oh, it was,
it was really like demons, like.
Yeah.
What do you want it to be,
a fucking David Copperfield illusion?
Like, what are you.
Well, watching like, an M Night
Shyamalan movie, like, every time.
Is that what you want? Every.
That's what a lot of people,
they think that they're there to solve
a mystery and be like, I figured it out,
and that's what they're there for.
They're not there to be told the story.
That's sad.
I've seen that because
it was in reference to that and Long Legs,
which we referenced
actually earlier, where it was like,
oh, see, it's really the devil.
It's like, yeah, cool.
The filmmaker wasn't hiding that.
Like, that was that was the matter.
It wasn't.
That wasn't a puzzle box to be solved.
Like that's. Yeah,
the sing is, you know, cool. Yep.
Devils real.
And he's going out and sending people to
to murder y'all.
Oh, I don't know.
It's a weird a very weird reaction,
but I could see
people having that with this one too,
where it's folk, it's folklore.
So, you know, the idea of a witch and
then like, if it's if if a witch actually
shows up, it's like, oh, a which showed up
and you said it was a witch.
Yeah.
Yes. That's what happened.
Rosemary's baby.
Guess what is the actual Antichrist?
It doesn't make it a bad movie at the end.
That's nonsensical.
It's.
Yeah, I have heard I have seen that
a number of times recently.
And every time I see them, like, I don't
know what the hell you are talking about.
Like, where is this an issue?
Yeah.
I mean, so I'm like the
I am the opposite of you
where I don't pick up on things,
but I think like, I.
Anyways.
I don't like, I don't I kind of,
I think I just go in with like open mind,
you know, like I'm not gonna let me
take me on this journey, you know.
Yeah. I'm not there to.
Yeah.
So I never like, try to predict
what's going to happen.
I usually like at the end I go,
oh yeah, yeah, I do like there was that
and there was that.
But like going into it, I,
I don't know how I just kind of just,
I turned that like the problem
solving part of my brain off.
It's not that I'm trying to do it.
A lot of times
I will figure something out,
not because I'm smart, like in reading,
like the script or something like that.
It's because the camera will do something.
Like, I remember we watched one of the
best examples, the funniest God dancing.
Great show
brought church with David Tennant,
Olivia Colman, Jodie Whittaker,
the UK version and it was this murder
mystery show wrapped around,
you know, emotional human problems.
And I guess that's the only way around
wrapping that around anyways.
And episode two of like nine,
I said, oh, that person did it
and there was no reason to sink this.
It was only because
within a scene that's
being shown,
there was a shot of a character
that didn't need to be there,
and I only interacted with this character
like once or twice, and I was like,
oh, well, that's that right.
It's right there.
And other other shows,
people try to get cute
and they blow it
and they think it's a surprise.
And that's what the problem, that's
when I don't like it.
When a director tries to get cute
and it's like,
I'm going to hide this over here
and no one's going to notice it.
And then like on your second view
and you're going to be like, oh my God.
And that happened in a couple of movies.
One of them was this overall fun,
sort of fun
movie called Search or Searching,
where this girl goes missing
and her father
is trying to find her, but only through,
like the power of social media.
And there's a picture of this girl
outside of her high school or her college.
And the sign behind her is for the sports
team and the sports team.
I want to say it was called
San Jose Catfish, and I was like,
oh, so she got catfished
because why the why else was that
the name of that team?
Yeah, yeah.
Like I was like,
that makes no sense at all like that.
Then that's it.
We're just waiting to find out.
And then later,
you know, maybe like halfway
through the film, you meet a character
who's a son of
of one of the other characters
in the film, and he's you only see him
in, like, the background,
but he's heavily shot, like,
lit from behind with his face all dark.
I was like, I just catch this by that guy.
And then the movie plays it out like it's
this big surprise and I'm like, it's not.
And then actually, a recent Marvel series
did this to me and I have not watched it.
I have not been able to go back to it.
And it was Ironheart.
And I want to say.
I watched
I just watched Wonder Man, but I did not.
Let me tell you something,
because I just drove me crazy.
There's been a running. Check it out.
There's been a running joke,
and I will admit, I have beaten this horse
into the ground of.
Every time Marvel announces something,
I will post Mephisto. And.
And so I'm watching Ironheart, and there's
a scene between two characters.
They're in an alleyway or something,
and behind
the character is a massive promo
or something for The Damnation of Foust.
And I'm like,
oh, I like the the Faustin deal
with the devil is this this is Mephisto.
And yes, it was.
It turns out I was like, fuck this.
I'm actually looking this up
because if this is actually Mephisto
and they put a poster of Foust
behind this goddamn character,
I'm going to I'm going to lose my shit
because it's so ridiculous to to do that.
Yeah, yeah, that's that's what it was.
I was like, why. Why, why distracted?
Because they mean.
Because they were like, oh, they'll be
you'll look back at this and be like,
God damn, look at that style.
Still, they'll find it out on Twitter and
it will go social or whatever it's like.
And it's just. Like.
So yeah, it was like,
we're just going to do an Easter egg here.
And I mean, movies have that all the time.
Like they have visual cues and that,
but when it's so on Front Street,
it's, it's weird to then act like it
was this big secret and big reveal.
It's fine to have that
stuff, but don't act like
you know you've made it.
That only Sherlock Holmes
that ever sick of this out.
You just got to read the background.
I remember so many like, student films
that I would see.
It'd be like a character's going
into a situation where they shouldn't.
And one of them in particular,
there's a bright neon sign
that they made that said turn Back now.
And it's just like at a party.
It's like at this person's
house, on a wall, at a party.
And I'm like, why?
Why is that there?
What is the backstory of this?
Yeah. Like what?
Why is that there?
And why do you think that I need to be
told in legit
bright flashing lights
that this character should turn back? Now?
It's just a strange, right?
I don't know what the line is
where I get like, no, stop that,
because it can ruin something
that I think the person is working on.
I mean, there's other films,
you know, like memento tips.
It's fucking hand right in front of you.
If you pay close enough attention
in the first 45 minutes or so.
Yeah, you can figure something
massive out in that film.
But it it happens
in the blink of an eye
and you might miss it.
Well, I mean, we could even talk about
the drama of, you know, the, the.
Absolutely photo of.
But that ties into
you have to have knowledge.
You have your poster also,
which is a wild thing
to kind of throw into something.
I've only seen it once, and I remember
we were trying to remember
if they showed that before
and then showed it afterwards.
But, that's that's interesting.
To bring it back to.
That is kind of a fun trick.
Is that is that going to work? Yeah.
But then do you need tricks when you're
dealing with that subject as a whole?
Nother subject.
That's like
a that
that goes into kind of like sociology.
And I'm not gonna
I'm not even going to delve into that.
Be like in Star Wars.
And this is stupid suggestion,
because I don't think Lucas really had
this part down when he wrote it.
Anyway, be like in Star Wars.
If when we first meet Darth Vader,
there's a big flashing sign that says,
like Father in Latin above him,
you'd be like, why is that there?
Why is this?
Say father in Latin above the space mayor?
Oh, well, what's going. On here?
Which, like, wait,
so is Darth Vader Latin for father
or is it German for some reason.
So I thought somebody said it.
Was. Really for father.
Yeah, yeah.
Is it like Darth Vader?
Like a pretty obvious.
Oh, I want to find. This translation.
Vader meaning
Vader meaning in German.
Vader meaning in German is father.
That's great.
So I'm. Like, oh, voter voters.
Oh, okay, so it's just a similarity.
But yeah, so I always was like,
so are the German elections.
Yeah.
Like are the German audiences going.
But but it's not
because and VAT are two different words.
And it's just like.
I wouldn't be surprised
if that's where Lucas put it.
But like that's different because you're
not going to immediately be like what?
We're probably spelling this wrong
and it's a different letter.
And that means farther, right?
You see, like there's a space,
there's a space in between that leap that
unless you have the secondary knowledge,
you are not going to
make the first assumption.
Right.
That you know, what actually that
that actually is is the thing.
If if I'm given the secondary knowledge,
if I don't have
the secondary knowledge, I shouldn't
be able to make that that connection.
Right.
It should be something. That difference.
That requires me
to make one too many steps,
unless I'm doing like a murder mystery.
And I don't like when murder mysteries,
when the end is like.
And here's how
you could have figured it out.
A bunch of shit
we never talked about, right?
It's totally out of left field.
Like, yeah, no, I never read crumbs.
I need I needed to add up at the end.
Yeah. Like, oh,
I figured this out because of information
that is in my character's head.
And you were never, ever, ever told this.
And you'll never figure it out.
I don't like that either.
That's that's it.
Isn't that the Christie thing?
No letter shows up.
Yeah, yeah.
No, definitely check that out
if it's playing near me and then I'll.
I'll see where I can find oddity.
But yeah.
No, I like I like the folklore type
horror stuff into that.
So I love it.
Free waka f r e w
a k a 2024 film.
I think it's on shudder
or it was for a while.
Free Waka free a.k.a.
fantastic folk horror film
like and no physical
release as of yet, which is really sucks.
I guess it's on AMC.
Plus, what the fuck is AMC plus?
What was the remember
when I was like something?
Oh, it was like the
that one's like it kind of makes sense.
What was it
was like some random one, remember?
And I was like,
oh, you could watch the Billy Joel.
Was it the the Russia?
Oh, yeah. Remember the Iron Curtain?
Yeah. Like I saw it, like forever
go back on HBO.
But I was trying to find it
where you could watch it to
to tell you where to watch it.
And it was like some random ass
streaming service.
Yeah. I can't remember.
I was hilarious, though.
I was like,
what is this streaming service?
Too many.
There's too many.
But also, I don't want to I don't want to
corporate choke hold on them either.
So I don't know.
That's a whole different discussion.
No chokeholds today.
Well anyways. Yeah. Holcomb.
Holcomb to Darth Vader.
Yeah there we go.
Hey guys.
Ashley here.
Thanks for listening to film. Curious
if you enjoyed this episode.
There's plenty more to come.
I'll be reviewing new theatrical releases
and just dreaming as much as possible,
so make sure to subscribe
wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks again. See you real soon!