At the tiny bar in a remote hotel in Ireland, famed novelist Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) raises a glass of whiskey for a toast: “to bleak endings,” he says. Ohm is in a typically blackened and cynical mood, getting drunk and feeling sorry for himself. He’s made his way to this rural establishment on a grief-stricken personal mission, to spread his parents’ ashes. He also has plans about his own bleak ending, but no one knows about that yet.

This is the bleak beginning to “Hokum,” the third feature from Irish writer/director Damian McCarthy, after “Caveat” and “Oddity.” Our protagonist, the surly and depressed writer Ohm, has been stuck on the ending to his book series featuring a conquistador lost in the desert with a young companion and a map trapped inside a bottle. So he’s distracted himself with a trip to the hotel where he last knew his parents were happy, on their honeymoon, before an unspeakable tragedy ripped his family apart, birthing his own current tragic existence.

He may be a writer of fiction, but Ohm turns up his nose at folklore. He chides the hotel owner Mr. Cob (Brendan Conroy) for telling children ghost stories in the lobby, and sniffs “hokum” when the bartender Fiona (Florence Ordesh) and bellboy Alby (Will O’Connell) tell him about the haunted honeymoon suite, where they claim a witch has taken up residence, and which is now locked and barred from the public. He even goes so far as to bully Alby and burn him with a spoon for daring to ask for writing advice. Our Ohm isn’t so likable, though he has reasons for his misery.

But the journey that McCarthy is about to run Ohm through is about learning to open up to such “hokum” — he’s going to have to become a believer in order to escape from the haunted honeymoon suite in his mind to get over the tragedies of his past.

Ohm may be at the haunted hotel to deal with his personal trauma, but McCarthy plants him inside a delicious murder mystery laced with Irish legend, weaving the supernatural and spiritual with the banality of human evil. Ohm is an unlikely hero, but the nagging mystery gets its hooks into him, and the only way out is through.

McCarthy has a deft way with crafting suspense in his script, leading with character first, planting conversational bombs that go off at intervals throughout the plot. There’s a propulsiveness to the pace and rhythm of these twists and reveals, as enemies and allies for Ohm pop out of the woodwork.

“Hokum” proves to be a particularly frightful game of Clue — was it the menacing groundskeeper Fergal (Michael Patric) with the crossbow in the office? Mysterious vagrant Jerry (David Wilmot) with the psilocybin in the forest? Simpering hotel manager Mal (Peter Coogan) with a cup of tea in the lobby? Or perhaps all three and then some.

However, much of the film is simply Ohm, alone, as he’s locked inside the honeymoon suite while following his curiosity, interacting with the environment around him. McCarthy and his cinematographer Colm Hogan produce some terrific visual storytelling as we watch him interact with the space and terrifying things inside it — both real and perhaps fantasy. The spooky environs created by production designer Til Frohlich are the stuff nightmares are made of; the murky bathtub, moldering linens and secret compartments that go bump in the night. You can practically smell the place.

But there’s a real satisfaction in watching Ohm figure out the suite’s unique conveniences, run by analog systems of pulleys and levers, confronting the terrors within and mastering them for his survival. It’s not just the practical, as Ohm has to embrace the “hokum” too, just to get through the night, and it fundamentally changes him as a person.

Which brings us back to the idea of a “bleak ending,” a concept that McCarthy introduces and then questions. “Hokum” might start in a bleak place, and the entire experience might be profoundly, existentially bone-rattling, but McCarthy’s dark fable argues that opening yourself up to the forces beyond the veil might just shake something loose, and might heal something, opening up a space for hope — or at least a different kind of ending.

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'HOKUM'

3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for some violent/disturbing content, and language)

Running time: 1:47

How to watch: In theaters May 1

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