Given the speechless sensational results of “Backrooms” and even more so “Obsession,” which grossed more than 680 times its $750,000 budget at the global box office, classic indie success stories are currently in danger of being lost. But “Hokum” is exactly one of those, which ended up with Neon after a bidding war between several US studios and was able to recoup three and a half times its cost of five million dollars in the USA alone.
For the Irish director and screenwriter Damian McCarthy, this is a huge leap after his festival insider tips “Caveat – The Warning” and “Oddity” – although his two central figureheads, eerie sets and a horror bunny with disturbingly large eyes, can also be found in what is by far his largest production to date.
Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) actually just wanted to commit suicide in peace, but then finds himself in the middle of a potentially supernatural missing person case.
“Hokum” begins – especially if you know that the occult fairy tale actually takes place in Ireland – with a big surprise: a conquistador (Austin Amelio) wanders through the desert with a little boy (Ezra Carlisle) in tow. Apparently he’s looking for treasure – and he keeps the map in a liquor bottle. But when the cork breaks off, he sees no other way to get the document than to smash the bottle on the boy’s skull. Quite nihilistic material – which shortly afterwards turns out to be the latest novel by the protagonist Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott).
The disillusioned best-selling author is also in a really bad mood in real life – and is determined to commit suicide in the Irish hotel where his parents once spent their honeymoon. However, the attempt to hang himself fails due to the attentive chambermaid Fiona (Florence Ordesh). After a few weeks in the hospital, Ohm wants to thank his rescuer before leaving – but unfortunately she has disappeared without a trace since the hotel’s Halloween party. Everything in the house and in the forest has already been searched – only in the bridal suite, which has been locked up for many years, no one has yet looked…
Not without my bunny
Anyone who has seen Damian McCarthy’s previous films can probably already guess what kind of costume the missing maid wore at the Halloween party: of course she was dressed as a rabbit! In “Caveat” the nasty, charred rabbit was even shown on the poster – and in “Oddity” there was at least one séance cameo. But apart from the continued processing of an obviously very personal plush trauma, it is above all the director’s second trademark that comes into full effect again in “Hokum”: his unerring feeling for claustrophobic spaces.
As soon as Ohm enters the barricaded bridal suite, “Hokum” comes to its senses: The production designers have certainly done a great job with this mixture of a hotel room, witch’s cellar and hellhole that has been untouched for years. Every detail is actually right – and Damian McCarthy uses even the smallest nooks and crannies to impress his audience with cleverly placed and not too overzealous doses Jump scares to wake up. Especially in modern horror cinema, such moments of horror, which are often used purely mechanically, can quickly become annoying – but like in “Hokum”, we are happy to put up with them.
There’s no Damian McCarthy film without bunnies! The plush toy also appears in different versions in “Hokum”.
By the time we secretly explored the hotel at night, we were slowly warming up to Adam Scott. Traditionally more at home in comedy (“Parks & Recreation”), we have already seen the “Severance” star this year as the desperate father of a missing son in the Netflix serial murder thriller “The Child Whisperer”. In “Hokum” he starts as a trauma-plagued mega-cynic. But when he, as an arrogant, arrogant US author, insults the bizarre Irish rural residents in the worst possible way, you don’t completely buy the role from him: his melancholic, lost dachshund look simply radiates too much charisma for that, despite the evil tips.
Luckily, after his suicide attempt, he comes back from the hospital a much less big asshole – and so after the encounter with a hermit (David Wilmot) who sips fly agaric milk, you keep both fingers crossed for him as he fights his way through locked miniature doors and old dumbwaiter shafts. It’s just a shame that the resolution of the missing person case isn’t likely to surprise the majority of the audience – the same amount of love and care could have been put into knitting the whodunit plot as they did into designing the sets.
Conclusion: The great looking “Hokum” combines crime thriller and trauma drama with Irish folk horror in a coherent, if not particularly surprising way. The atmospheric claustrophobic sets, the hand-made horror effects and the ones that aren’t thrown in at all are particularly impressive Jump scares – and Adam Scott, who was miscast at least in the first third, gets the turn in time later on.
We saw “Hokum” at the Fantasy Filmfest 2026, where it celebrated its German premiere.