‘Hokum’ Review: Adam Scott Is Haunted in a Hair-Raising, Often Exhilarating Irish Horror Tale

SXSW: Damian McCarthy's third feature hones the Irish writer/director’s horror style to a sharp and terrifying point.

Jump scares get a bad rap. Sure, they can be cheap, a crutch for directors who lack the ability to create tension through more ambitious structural means. But when paired with solid filmmaking, a good jump scare can take an otherwise pretty good movie and turn it into a giggly, exhilarating rollercoaster ride — which is exactly what Irish writer/director Damian McCarthy does with “Hokum.” 

McCarthy’s last movie, 2024’s “Oddity,” featured the scariest scene of that year, involving a flashlight, a tent, and a booming knock on the door of an isolated farmhouse in the middle of the night. And although it’s only March, “Hokum” will almost certainly be a contender for the title in 2026. The centerpiece scare in “Hokum” doesn’t stray too far from “Oddity”: It also takes place in an enclosed space, in the dark, with something inexplicable and terrifying jumping out of the shadows. But the editing, sound design, production design, and cinematography in this sequence are so well-executed that it still manages to shock and delight.

This is McCarthy’s third feature, and so far, every one of his movies has improved on the last. All three are supernatural morality tales with themes of guilt and punishment (that’s Irish Catholicism for you), an interest in folklore, and a fixation on creepy dolls. “Hokum” takes place on Halloween, at a haunted hotel in the Irish countryside full of unsettling atmosphere and surrounded by goats who attack the guests’ cars while they’re tripping on mushrooms. As a setting, it’s both deeply strange and intuitively correct, an evocative location for McCarthy’s 21st-century storybook tale.

Each of McCarthy’s films gets a little bigger in scale as well, and “Hokum” marks his first collaboration with a Hollywood actor. Adam Scott stars as Ohm Bauman, a bitter alcoholic novelist who travels to the Billberry Woods Hotel to procrastinate on finishing the last book in his popular “Conquistador Trilogy.” (It’s a relatable motivation, at least to the writers in the audience.) He’s also there to scatter the ashes of his parents, both of whom died when he was very young. 

His tragic backstory doesn’t excuse what a jerk Ohm is to the hotel’s bellboy Alby (Will O’Connell), however, and given that this is a Damian McCarthy movie, his comeuppance is sure to come. Often cast as a nice guy, it’s fun to see Scott as an unlikable asshole, a role he plays with withering deadpan directness. A dark and dramatic development early on makes Ohm a little more sympathetic, leading him back to the hotel in search of a bartender named Fiona (Florence Ordesh), who told him the spooky legend of the witch who haunts the hotel’s honeymoon suite. 

When Ohm arrives, he’s told that Fiona is missing, and no one has seen her since the night of the hotel’s Halloween party. A local eccentric (David Wilmot) suspects foul play and tells Ohm that he knows she’s dead because he saw her ghost in the hotel lobby a few nights before. Ohm is skeptical, of course. But he owes Fiona a favor, and so he breaks into the honeymoon suite to search for her. Soon, he’s trapped in this musty space all alone  — at least until the nightmare rabbits and skittering black-eyed specters emerge after dark.

This is where “Hokum” really hits its stride. The suite is very deliberately laid out, which gives the fright sequences the feel of a video game, or perhaps an immersive experience that encourages one to pick up objects and explore different spaces. The tightest of these is a dumbwaiter that supposedly leads to nothing, although we know this isn’t true from the moment Scott sticks his head into it and looks down. When he eventually crawls inside, McCarthy and DP Colm Hogan cut off the composition at the sides, using shadow and darkness to essentially crop the image from 16:9 into a claustrophobic 4:3. 

These cramped spaces are contrasted with an eerie, expansive whooshing on the soundtrack, which is layered with choking sobs and ominous moaning low in the mix. Occasionally, the clear, loud sound of a bell cuts through the mix, jolting the viewer back into the moment. Combined with cinematography that stays clear and legible even under low light, and decisive cuts from editor Brian Phillip Davis, the clean, classical filmmaking contrasts nicely with the ominous emptiness of the film’s shadowy corners and the ambiguous mystery of its central plot, keeping viewers off balance and on edge throughout key scenes. 

McCarthy loses focus after this symphony of tightly controlled terror midway through the second act, adding a little too much backstory and a few too many scenes to the film’s denouement. Still, when “Hokum” works, it really works. It’s straightforward, but that’s OK — we’ve had a lot of attempts to “elevate” the horror genre over the past decade or so. Instead, it’s just a good old-fashioned ghost story, the kind you’d tell over a campfire to scare children. And it’s a hair-raising one at that. 

Grade: B+

“Hokum premiered at SXSW 2026. Neon releases the film in theaters May 1.

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