Hokum

Uncertainty is a genre trope this director is particularly gifted at manipulating. So many horror films are incoherent due to a lack of good writing; if anything in McCarthy’s script isn’t fully clear, it’s in the same manner that life itself fails to make sense.

Hokum is a refinement of what came before, not a rehash: a terrifically composed throwback that knows when to play things grounded and when to embrace the horror for its full potential.

Hokum is the latest fruit of McCarthy’s chameleonic gifts, and his best film yet.

As counter-programming to the early summer season's blockbusters, this delivers better than a lot of the more expensive titles against which it is competing. It serves as a potent reminder that a well-crafted atmosphere and a singular, focused vision can be far more terrifying than a hundred million dollars' worth of digital effects.

This eerie riff on The Shining feels as if the Irish writer-director has a better grasp on both the catch-and-release tension that the genre needs and the balancing of sharp shocks and slow-simmering dread.

It is an amusing and gruesome premise, which writer-director Damian McCarthy stretches out into a convoluted, bizarre extended narrative.

Despite the heavy metaphors and emotionally weighted hauntings, there’s nothing new here – it’s all painfully dull and familiar horror territory.

Arguably one of the best horror movies of 2026. Hokum is a masterfully crafted supernatural film that heavily honors traditional Irish folklore while delivering raw, skin-crawling terror. The atmosphere is so incredibly thick and dread-inducing that I found myself shivering even during the daytime scenes. The story builds up beautifully, delivering solid, unpredictable twists that keep you hooked. Adam Scott gives a career-best performance as Ohm Bauman; he balances a cynical, harsh exterior with a deeply tragic and sad past twist that gives the horror a massive emotional weight. The only minor flaw is that the physical presentation of the witch could have been more horrific and terrifying during the climax. Aside from that, it is a brilliant, atmospheric watch that handles tension flawlessly. Highly recommended.

I like the location and setup. It's pretty low on energy and doesn't really expand in any notable way throughout its runtime.

Lack of personality, scares and fear. I didn't go into 'Hokum' with high expectations, even though social media has been selling it as a chaotic, unsettling experience packed with suspense. What held me back from the very beginning was its resemblance - copy, plagiarism, coincidence, call it whatever you want - to the aesthetic of 'The Black Phone'. Not in terms of story, but in its dark atmosphere, the use of the mask, and the whole basement-game setup. Maybe it's simply a recurring visual element unique to the film itself, but the mask has become such a strong leitmotif of Scott Derrickson's work that the comparison feels impossible to avoid. McCarthy promises sustained tension, suffocating suspense, discomfort, a racing heartbeat... but I found none of that. If anything, I almost fell asleep. The plot never truly hooked me at any point, and because of that, my attention kept drifting elsewhere. I simply couldn't find the emotional impact everyone keeps talking about. The film follows a writer haunted by the ghosts of his past while staying at a hotel to scatter his parents' ashes. Added to that are layers of Irish witchcraft folklore and the dark secrets hidden within the place itself. The issue isn't the ambition of trying to juggle so many ideas in a single story - it's the lack of cohesion between them. The central narrative unfolds with unmistakable similarities to 'The Shining', particularly through the hotel setting, and that influence becomes so overwhelming that the film struggles to establish any personality of its own. The result is a collection of subplots that attempt to converge but never properly do. The final sequences make sense within the narrative logic, but they fail to justify everything that came before. As for the horror itself, it feels closer to the parody-like terror Sam Raimi explored in 'Drag Me to Hell'. There are scenes clearly designed to scare the audience, but they simply don't work. There's no surprise because I could predict nearly every development long before it happened. The little horror the film does contain feels more like a series of disconnected sketches - not intentionally comedic, but still incapable of creating genuine fear. The one truly solid aspect of the film is Adam Scott. His performance works within the tone of the story, although it's hard for me to separate him from his comedic image in 'Grown Ups', where he plays a clueless idiot with no common sense whatsoever. In 'Hokum', he's the complete opposite: rough, emotionally cold, and at times even disturbingly psychopathic. Without him, the film probably would have been far worse. What I completely missed was a deeper exploration of the witchcraft mythology the film promises from the start. There are interesting ideas buried underneath, but they never develop into anything substantial. In that sense, I expected something closer to 'The Conjuring' or 'The Witch', yet the story constantly drifts toward entirely different territory. The problem isn't necessarily what the film ends up being - because it's not terrible - but rather what it initially feels like it's going to be. So no, I wouldn't call 'Hokum' a bad movie. It's just one that gets stuck in the middle of nowhere. Disposable afternoon entertainment without much weight or ambition. Honestly, I'd probably find it more stimulating to revisit the entire 'Annabelle' franchise - including 'The Nun' - than to sit through this again.

Boring, bad, cheaply made and terribly acted excluding Adam Scott. Some of the acting was that bad it was like watching an episode of Faircity.

More crappy Hollywood made to poison the people's minds. This is so bad. No one is watching this garbage.