Publication Date: 05-02-2026

Hokum (2026) review

Dir. Damian McCarthy

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy follows-up his critically acclaimed Oddity (2024) with Hokum. Chief of all its positive attributes is the way in which it allows everyone involved to show their personal strengths for the benefit of the larger production. This goes down the line from McCarthy himself to Adam Scott, cinematographer Colm Hogan, composer Joseph Bishara, and Will O’Connell, who might play my favorite horror movie character of the year.

In Hokum, Scott plays Ohm Bauman, a horror writer, who travels to a remote hotel in Ireland, where his mother and father stayed on their honeymoon, to scatter their ashes near a giant redwood tree. Ohm’s mother died many years ago after a tragic accident that has left him emotionally scarred; his dad subsequently spiraled into alcoholism and made the remainder of his childhood miserable.

Let’s talk about the Bilberry Woods Hotel. It’s run amok with quirky individuals, including a young woman (Florence Ordesh) with whom Ohm shares a drink right before she goes missing. Their brief albeit sincere connection motivates Ohm to try and find out, which oddly angers the manager of the hotel (Peter Coonan), while the business’ paraplegic owner (Brendan Conroy) proves suspicious and irascible too. Also lurking on the periphery is Jerry (David Wilmot), a shaggy vagabond who drinks mushroom-laced milk.

For starters, McCarthy’s latest allows Scott to showcase the power of his caustic wit, unbridled arrogance, self-doubt, guilt, and his facial expressions, wrapping them into a character unafraid to be unlikable. He’s also realistically funny. One of the aspects that kept me within arm’s distance of loving Oddity was its atmosphere and dread felt rigid without feeling lived-in. Hokum is the opposite. McCarthy allows Scott to quell the dread with well-timed facial reactions or the occasional snide remark. Ohm’s first interaction with Jerry is the pinnacle of this, where Jerry speaks with certainty regarding the location of the key to the hotel’s honeymoon suite. When Ohm asks how he can be so sure, Jerry admits he doesn’t know. It’s Wilmot’s Irish drawl and intuitive convictions that sell the scene, and a great example of the way McCarthy peppers his macabre work with light-hearted humor.

Once again, McCarthy enlists in the services of cinematographer Colm Hogan to bolster Hokum‘s visual appeal, making it a tone-poem of sorts with evident influences of Irish folklore and witchcraft. Hogan is careful not to let other influences permeate his style too aggressively. One aspect I would’ve loved to see more is his deft employment of analog horror aesthetics in a flashback sequence featuring Will O’Connell as “Jack the Donkey,” a mortifyingly creepy children’s TV show host. What a performance from O’Connell in a scene that barely lasts a minute. O’Connell finds the right vocal tone for such an atrocious-looking, anthropomorphic donkey hellspawn: it’s croaky, guttural, yet oddly amusing. I’m not one to beg for spinoffs, but I’ll file a Jack the Donkey movie next to the King Shark movie in the mental cabinet of projects I yearn for that I’ll never get.

Hokum is also behooved by a strong, rhythmic pacing thanks to Brian Philip Davis’ editing. It’s as if we’re on a rolling cart through this unsettling Irish hotel, naturally finding nooks and corridors. While a few jumpscares exist, they’re earned jolts in a film that knows how to intertwine them with dread and narrative intrigue. Blessed so, when it all comes to an end, McCarthy’s story feels complete. It doesn’t elect to pull the tired curve-ball of being opaque or open-ended for the sake of a sequel. It even returns to the clever opening scene, making for an effective wraparound that ties together the story’s themes and effectively furthers the ascension of yet another dynamic voice in the thriving horror genre.

Starring: Adam Scott, David Wilmot, Peter Coonan, Florence Ordesh, Michael Patric, Brendan Conroy, Austin Amelio, and Will O’Connell. Directed by: Damian McCarthy.