Vasuri 🧐

Come and get me. ☕️

The acting was as shaky as the camerawork. I believed La Fors and McGann as a married couple like I believe Trump when he speaks. The spiritual and demonic nonsense were bullshit, but it was made clear that they were residual traces of Kate’s past and not be taken literally.

The parts that intrigued me the most were the parts in which Kate has psychological flashbacks to moments from her youth in which her sick father beckoned to her for “help”. Some dark shit is implied here, and that’s where the film’s power was for me.

When evening falls and Adam still is not back yet, Kate begins to understand that he may not be returning. She’s out in the desolate woods, alone with nothing but her past and her guilt, the latter of which is only beginning to come into the story.

On the way there, Adam pulls over in the woods and gets out to go take a piss. While he’s gone, Kate begins to wonder what’s taking him so long, so she gets out and calls for him, but to no avail. She returns to the car unnerved.

It’s been twenty years since Kate has seen her friend Venetia (played by Kahrissa Yazzolino), and things have long been awkward with them ever since a childhood incident in which Kate panicked as Venetia was drowning.

Here we have Kate Sindall (played by Corinne La Fors). She’s getting ready for a weekend away so she can attend her childhood best friend’s bridal shower by the lake. Her husband Adam (played by Curtis McGann) plans to drop her off and then go fishing for the weekend.

When I first saw this title on my recommendations list, I thought it might be some sort of 1970s Italian giallo or something of that nature, but perhaps that was wishful thinking at work.

Movie of the Day: Hand of Satan (2026) * This film was released online in the US on March 1, 2026. * This film was written and directed by Jason Hawkins, who’s been dabbling in horror shorts and features since 2009 or so.

Thanks! I’ve passed that message along to her. 😊

They ain’t exactly the Grady Twins, but they’ll have to do. My final take is that this film spent more time praising its influences than creating great horror. For that matter, I’ll admit that I didn’t find it scary. I lost interest by the halfway point and never recovered it.

In some ways this film was sort of like The Shining (1980) if Jack Torrance had been a total jerkoff to everyone he encountered and not just to Wendy. There were many similarities, but no amount of them could make Hokum into a masterpiece. It was an okay film though.

After Fiona goes missing, Ohm ends up involved in investigating what happened to her, and naturally the Honeymoon Suite are a part of the festivities. That’s as much as I’ll go into detail about here though.

This is Cob (played by Brendan Conroy), the owner of the hotel who has his staff convinced that he once trapped a witch inside the hotel’s Honeymoon Suite, a room that has remained closed and off-limits ever since.

Ohm takes an instant liking to Fiona (played by Florence Ordesh), the hotel bartender who hands him back the same prickish attitude that he’d initially given her.

Ohm locates the big redwood tree that was special to his parents, and he scatters their ashes there at the root of it.

Instead of The Overlook’s hedge maze model in the main lobby, this lobby has an area with some odd little figurines that Ohm can’t help but notice.

A writer checking into a luxurious and remote hotel with spacious, sprawling grounds and a forthcoming costume party with cocktails and live music- what an utterly unique horror concept that’s never been done before! 🙃

Seeing what may well have been his mother’s ghost prompts Ohm to take a trip to The Bilberry Woods Hotel in rural Ireland, the place where his parents had honeymooned, so he can lay their ashes to rest.