Adam Scott meets an Irish witch—and lives through his trauma. Review of 'Hokum' (2026): frightening folklore, viscous atmosphere, and one of the best horror films of the year from the director of 'The Medium'.
Damian McCarthy makes horror films about people who walk toward what they'd better not meet. 'Hokum' is his third film and, it seems, the most honest answer to why we still take those steps.
Om Bauman (Adam Scott) is an American writer with a name that would suit a meditating yogi more than an irritable misanthrope with a habit of being rude to service staff. He's stuck on the finale of his trilogy about a conquistador, and he takes an urn with the ashes of his long-dead parents to the Irish countryside, to the dilapidated Billberry Woods hotel where they once spent their honeymoon. This is not a sentimental impulse—it's an attempt to extract something alive from himself using someone else's memory. McCarthy makes it clear from the first minutes: Om came here not to close the past, but to open something that would have been better left locked.
The hotel greets the guest with a dead goat in the parking lot. Then it gets worse.
The elderly hotel owner scares children in the lobby with stories about a witch; behind the bar lies a hefty book on Irish folklore—not because the script requires it, but because it's simply there, like a salt shaker or an ashtray.
McCarthy refuses to explain his world: he fills it with details. The honeymoon suite has been locked for many years—rumor has it that's where the witch was imprisoned. It sounds like a local tale to scare tourists, and Om, a cynic and rationalist, treats it as such. But folklore in 'Hokum' works as a diagnostic tool: it reveals in characters what they themselves would prefer not to notice. Human cruelty gives birth to monsters—and monsters, in the film's logic, are nothing but karma taking physical form.
'Hokum' comes out in the context of the so-called Green Scream wave—a movement of new Irish horror that has given the genre several truly distinctive voices in recent years. McCarthy stands apart in this lineup: while others readily appeal to Celtic aesthetics as a visual attraction, he uses it as a coordinate system for discussing trauma and guilt.
The hotel in the film is a character, not a setting. Corridors that seem longer than they should be. Staircases leading nowhere. The old elevator as an escape route—claustrophobic, creaky, almost cartoonish in its hopelessness. McCarthy and his cinematographer build anxiety not through editing tricks but through space: Billberry Woods presses down on its own, even before any supernatural elements appear. A Halloween party in the middle of the season—pumpkins everywhere, drunk guests, costumes—only heightens the discomfort: everything around already looks like a masquerade, so it becomes impossible to tell who is 'in costume' and who isn't.
Jerry (David Wilmot), a local drifter living in a van in the woods, could have been another colorful eccentric in the vein of provincial horror, but McCarthy gives him unexpected depth. Jerry and Om share something in common—both carry a loss for which they are tacitly judged (mostly by themselves), both are stuck on the sidelines of life. This is one of the film's best techniques: human pain rhymes with mythological horror, and you don't always understand which is scarier.
Casting Adam Scott is a risky but successful decision. The actor is best known for comedic roles and the image of Mark Scout from 'Severance'—a man whose face is always slightly more surprised than necessary. Here he plays a frankly unpleasant person: Om is rude, egocentric, drinks, snaps, and cannot accept care. We are not looking at a victim we automatically sympathize with, but a person whom the witch—or the past, or himself—forces to become someone else. Scott handles it brilliantly. He doesn't panic, doesn't scream, doesn't play fear by the standard notes—his Om breaks down gradually and, one might say, with dignity, which makes the final breakdown far more convincing than any jump scare.
Honesty requires admitting: McCarthy's script is a bit overloaded. The conquistadors from the prologue exist in a parallel universe (though the parallel with Om's character is clear as day), the motivation of the human villain is not very convincing—if the film were a detective story, it would be ridiculed for such a move. And the overall feeling from 'Hokum' is like being in several different hotels at once.
But here's the paradox: it is precisely this lack of obviousness that works in the film's favor. 'Hokum' does not chew its metaphors, does not scatter hints here and there for the impatient—and because of this, the atmosphere does not fall apart even in moments of narrative distraction. Fear is based not on logic, but on the feeling that something is deeply wrong in this hotel.
'Hokum' is a horror film made by someone who understands: real horror lives not in the witch behind the locked door, but in why exactly you came to that door. McCarthy has made his most accessible and scariest film—one after which you want to leave the light on, not only because it's creepy, but also because some of what you've seen is too recognizable and understandable. If you haven't yet delved into his previous works—'Caveat' and 'The Medium'—'Hokum' will be an excellent entry point. And if you have—welcome back to his universe of horror, which is damn interesting.
In theaters since November 28, you can be scared by 'The Medium', another shadowy hit in the horror genre by Irish director Damian McCarthy, who previously surprised audiences with his
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