A couple of weeks ago, I noticed people saying that this is going to be the scariest movie of 2026. I usually tend to avoid these hype trains, and I did the same with this one. It’s better to go in cautiously and then be pleasantly surprised than the other way around. Tense and atmospheric, Hokum is a slow-burning horror movie about a writer trying to survive his stay in a haunted Irish hotel. So, nothing you haven’t seen before. I don’t want to go into too many details, but let’s just say there’s a bit more to this story. However, the execution is the thing that makes Hokum so damn scary and intense. Just a couple of days ago, I was talking about Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. It features strong body horror but lacks any real scares.
Here, the situation is reversed; we’ll get just a few graphic scenes, but, on the other hand, there will be a lot of scares coming your way. And I’m not talking just about the usual jump-scares, or the ” there’s something in the corner scares. There will be plenty of those, make no mistake. Once our protagonist arrives in this sleepy Irish hotel and stuff starts happening, the fear will be almost constant. Mostly because it’s generated by this mysterious and brooding atmosphere. And that mystery extends to the story as well. At the end, we’ll get two ambiguous explanations without that satisfying reveal. Don’t worry, you won’t feel that as you’ll be under the impact of all the shit that happened so far.
Some ten minutes after the movie is over, you’ll start realizing that you don’t know much about the stuff you’ve seen happen with your own eyes. What’s with the strange “door”? Where did that guy go? Add to this the lack of a backstory, and you start realizing that this movie, Hokum, is fucking hokum. Is this a ghost story, a psychological horror, a haunted house movie, or a classic folk horror story? I think it’s a highly effective blend of all of those things. And that’s why I love it so much. To get back to the above-mentioned Cronin, both he and Damian McCarthy, the director of Hokum, are Irish. If that name sounds a bit familiar, it’s because we already discussed his last movie, Oddity.
You can feel that Damian upgraded his trademark brooding atmosphere and the ability to put you right there, inside the movie. Now, that’s an ability we rarely come across. You know those scenes where nothing happens but people looking anxiously in the dark corners or waiting for something? That’s gold for aspiring filmmakers because scenes like this are cheap and effective. Especially when you’re working on a single-location horror movie, like this one. However, you need to know how to create these scenes. What makes this whole thing feel even more bizarre is Damian’s choice to make most of the characters quite rude.
Rude and cynical, to be more precise. Adam Scott (Severance) plays Ohm Bauman, a cranky writer who doesn’t care what you think about him. Fergal, Cob, and Mal are also relatively unlikable. We also have a couple of seemingly positive characters, but I will leave them up for you to discover. What I will say is that all of them were quite believable and intriguing. I wanted to know more about them, about what makes them tick. Ohm is especially interesting with his intensely dark bio and quite bleak future. Visually, Hokum is fucking flawless. That fucking hotel looks realistic and lived-in, something that’s quite hard to pull off. I know that I’m repeating myself when it comes to these types of movies, but when you have a single location, you’d better make full use of it.
And that’s exactly what they did here, adding claustrophobia to the already dreadful atmosphere. If I had to single out a movie most similar to Hokum, that has to be 1408. Starring John Cusack, it features a similar concept and execution minus the folk horror elements. Finally, I have to say that I loved the many references to rabbits in this movie. I mean, what would you expect from a site called Subversive Rabbit? Try to catch them all.
Director: Damian McCarthy
Writer: Damian McCarthy
Cast: Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Florence Ordesh, Michael Patric, Will O’Connell
Fun Facts: The wall in the basement with a crude door painted with a chalk features Ogham, an early medieval alphabet used by the Irish from 4th to 6th century.
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IMDb Link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35672862/
