NEONThere’s nothing as powerful as a good old-fashioned jump scare. Often, they can be used as a crutch for many less-skilled directors or a gimmick to distract from a weak script. But when done right, and when done just sparingly enough, they can turn a solid horror movie into one of the scariest cinematic experiences of the year. That is certainly the case with Hokum, Damian McCarthy’s bone-chilling ghost movie that was easily one of the best films to premiere at this year’s SXSW festival.Hokum opens, unexpectedly, in the desert. A conquistador and his page boy are trudging through the harsh dunes searching for buried treasure when, just as they seemed to have reached their destination, the map gets stuck in a bottle. As the desperate conquistador contemplates murdering his companion to finally find this coveted treasure, we suddenly cut to author Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) in his darkened, empty house, typing away. He’s writing the final chapters to his beloved “Conquistador Trilogy,” the novels that put him on the map. But as he finishes those final paragraphs, taking a swig of his nearly empty whiskey glass in celebration, he spots a figure on the staircase. He slowly points his lamp at the stairs, only to show… nothing. Just as suddenly as the figure disappears, Hokum changes scenery. Bauman arrives at a remote Irish hotel where his parents honeymooned, hoping to spread their ashes in the surrounding woods. But things feel a little bit off about this creaky old hotel. An eccentric vagabond lurks around in the woods. A disgruntled hotel employee regularly slays the stray goats that wander onto the hotel grounds. There are creepy little figurines of wide-eyed children and monsters from Irish folklore scattered around the hotel. And, of course, there’s the matter of the barred-off honeymoon suite, which is said to be haunted by a witch.When you take it down to its barest essentials, Hokum is a haunted house movie. But what’s most remarkable about Hokum is that it’s not doing anything especially novel or innovative within the confines of the genre; instead, it’s simply a showcase for how a well-crafted, rock-solid ghost movie can still petrify you beyond belief. Hokum is McCarthy’s follow-up to his sleeper hit Oddity, itself a terrifying exercise in suspense and proof that the budding horror director knows his way around a good old-fashioned scare. And Hokum is entirely built around classic horror techniques and scares — all shadowy corridors and creaky doors, or an ominous whistling wind that blows through the eerily empty halls. It helps build a sense of overwhelming, all-encompassing dread as a bellboy peers through pitch-black doors to the honeymoon suite, or as Bauman descends down a secret, dusty basement. McCarthy and cinematographer Colm Hogan take a page right out of moody gothic horror movies like Jack Clayton’s The Innocents in painting the film’s chilly, gloomy atmosphere, and, like his previous film did, the TV works of Mike Flanagan. Indeed, Hokum feels like it has more in common with the classic gothic thriller than it does the folk horror or trauma horror it occasionally evokes. Though once it’s revealed how truly embedded in Irish folk horror the film is, Hokum takes on a new layer of wild audaciousness that pushes back against the “prestige” that trauma horror has become associated with.Adam Scott has never been better than as the wretched writer at the center of Hokum. | NEONHowever, Hokum does have its flirtation with the contemporary horror obsession with grief: Throughout the film, Bauman is haunted by the tragic demise of his mother, and deals with it by bullying his adoring fans or drinking himself into a stupor. Scott, having stretched his dramatic chops in recent seasons of Severance, gives one of his best performances as the film’s alcoholic asshole writer who is plagued by horrors both emotional and real. And even as the film toys with Bauman's likability, it doesn’t shy away from putting him through the cosmic wringer, teasing a sort of hellish punishment for his “sins.” It makes for a curious combination of gothic dread and supernatural thrills that somehow works terrifically.To get into further detail about Hokum would risk going into spoilers, but one sequence in this film rivals last year’s Weapons climax in terms of sheer terror and momentum. After 90 minutes of building a sense of dread that penetrates every frame of the movie, Hokum barrels towards an explosive finale that feels like it signals a key moment in horror this year. It’s the kind of fine-tuned horror filmmaking that you can fully appreciate once your heart stops beating wildly and you’ve settled back in your own skin. Hokum premiered at SXSW on March 14. It releases in theaters on May 1.