Hokum review

Hokum is another one of those horror movies from this year that deserved a much bigger audience than it got. There have been a surprising number of really good horror movies in 2026, and I'd put this one right up there with the better entries. It's directed by Damian McCarthy, who made Oddity, and it stars Adam Scott as Ohm Bauman, a successful novelist who travels to a remote seaside hotel in Ireland to scatter his parents' ashes and finish the last chapter of his latest book. From the moment he arrives, things start going sideways.

Part of what makes the movie work is Adam Scott, because I've never really seen him play a character like this before. Most of the time he's the lovable, awkward guy you're naturally rooting for. Here, he gets to go full asshole, and there's really not much about him that's redeeming. He's arrogant, he thinks he's the smartest person in every room he walks into, and he condescends to everybody around him. The interesting thing is that the movie doesn't seem to care whether you like him or not. It isn't trying to make excuses for him. That's just who he is, and that's who you're following through the story. In a way, it reminded me of Obsession. You may or may not like the protagonist, but it's pretty clear the writer doesn't really care whether you do. They aren't trying to write somebody who's easy to root for. They're writing the person they want to put through this nightmare.

As the movie goes along, you're never really sure what kind of horror film you're watching. Is this a murder mystery? Is this supernatural horror? Are there really mystical things happening here, or are there just very bad people involved? The movie keeps you guessing for a long time, and I appreciated that. It doesn't immediately show its hand. Instead, you follow Ohm as he slowly digs himself deeper into whatever is happening at this old Irish hotel, and the more he investigates, the stranger things become, and the less certain you are about where the line between folklore and reality actually is. Irish folklore hangs over the entire movie, and because of that setting you're almost primed to believe something supernatural is waiting around the corner.

One of my favorite things about the movie is watching this hyper-skeptical, hyper-rational guy slowly reach the point where even he can't explain what's happening anymore. He's constantly trying to out-think everything. Every strange event has to have a logical explanation, every creepy story has to be nonsense, and watching him decide, little by little, whether he actually believes any of it becomes just as interesting as the mystery itself.

The movie still delivers what you want from a horror film. There are jump scares, there are some escape-room style sequences once he finally decides to figure out what's really happening, there are plenty of creepy images, and there are a couple of surprises toward the end that I won't spoil. If you've seen a lot of horror movies over the last few years, you may figure out part of what's happening before the movie reveals it, but I don't think that's really the point. The fun is watching everything unfold and seeing how the pieces fit together.

Adam Scott really impressed me here. This is such a different role for him, and I thought he completely committed to it. The supporting cast all do solid work as well, especially the strange collection of people working at and around the hotel, who constantly leave you wondering whether they're hiding something or whether they're just eccentric.

This deserved better than becoming one of those movies that quietly disappears into video-on-demand a month after release. If you're into horror, I definitely recommend it. It's fascinating, it's well done, and it deserves to be seen.