Hokum review: Adam Scott's film is creepy, clever… then completely lost

Hokum review: Adam Scott plays a troubled horror writer who reaches a remote Irish hotel to scatter his parents' ashes, and becomes fixated on a locked honeymoon suite. Damian McCarthy's film sustains an eerie folklore mood and strong performances, but the narrative grows increasingly uneven.

In Short

• Hokum is a 2026 horror thriller set in rural Ireland
• Adam Scott stars as a troubled horror writer at a spooky hotel
• Film blends Irish folklore, witchcraft and jump scares

Hokum, a horror thriller from writer-director Damian McCarthy, follows American horror writer Ohm Bauman, played by Adam Scott, as he travels to a run-down hotel in remote rural Ireland to scatter his parents' ashes. The visit is meant to be a quiet retreat, but the stay turns eerie when he becomes fixated on the hotel’s locked "honeymoon suite", which the staff say, holds a 400-year-old witch captive.

The film opens with a strong setup and a central character who is hard to warm to. Ohm is a successful writer, but he is also lonely, sliding into alcoholism and clearly agonised by pain in his personal life.

He is brooding over the brutally nihilistic ending to his latest novel, and is also struggling with the ending of a well-received trilogy. As he labours through that work, he begins seeing things and hearing sounds, which adds to the sense that he is already unsettled before he reaches Ireland.

At the hotel, where his mum and dad spent their honeymoon and where he knows they were happy together, Ohm arrives as the only guest. The place is picturesque but faintly disturbing.

One of the first things he sees is a dead goat in the car park; he is told it had to be culled because it kept climbing onto guests’ vehicles to stare at its reflection in the paintwork. Ohm is abrasive with the staff, including Fiona, played by Florence Ordesh, who works behind the bar. She is indifferent to his celebrity but seems to sense how unhappy he is, and she emerges as the one person willing to listen.

McCarthy builds the film around Irish folklore, witchcraft and a haunted-hotel mood, and there are moments when that atmosphere works. The premise is amusing and gruesome, and the film delivers some efficient jump scares. Scott plays Ohm with a dry, deadpan energy that suits the character’s dark and unsympathetic edge, and he commits fully as the writer is drawn deeper into the hotel’s creepy corners and its secretive staff.

The supporting cast also leaves an impression in brief appearances. Peter Coonan plays Mal, the hotel owner’s son-in-law who runs the front desk, Michael Patric is the owner’s bossy son, and O’Connell appears as the put-upon bellboy.

David Wilmot brings some odd energy as Jerry, a local hermit and vagabond who lives in a van in the surrounding woodland where Ohm’s parents once wandered. His habit of drinking a mushroom-based smoothie of his own invention leads to predictably chaotic results. Among the staff, Ordesh makes the strongest mark as Fiona, the kind bartender who lends an ear to anyone with a story.

Even so, the film completely loses its footing as it goes on. What begins as an engaging supernatural mystery grows uneven in the middle and gradually collapses into a convoluted and bizarre narrative that includes two separate hospital stays for Ohm.

The horror leans heavily on sound effects and atmospheric dread, but it does not develop that into a clear story with enough weight behind the ghostly presence or the cause of the haunting.

Watch the trailer here:

At times, the film feels painfully stretched and padded with unnecessary background score to elevate tension, as if this material would have worked far better as an atmospheric short story or a compact novella – instead of dragging us through a bloated one-hour forty-minute "so-called horror" flick that eventually runs out of steam.

Hokum has an interesting setting, a striking central performance from Scott and a premise that mixes black comedy with supernatural horror. But while the film keeps returning to the eerie promise of the locked suite, the story around it becomes increasingly uneven and ultimately disappointing.

A question to the makers: How come this even made it to the theatres?

By the end, the mood remains, but the narrative never fully matches the strength of the idea – leaving a film that feels like a missed opportunity and a bit of a letdown.

- Ends