Leap scares get a nasty rap. Positive, they are often low-cost, a crutch for administrators who lack the flexibility to create pressure by means of extra bold structural means. However when paired with stable filmmaking, a very good soar scare can take an in any other case fairly good film and switch it right into a giggly, exhilarating rollercoaster experience — which is strictly what Irish author/director Damian McCarthy does with “Hokum.”
McCarthy’s final film, 2024’s “Oddity,” featured the scariest scene of that 12 months, involving a flashlight, a tent, and a booming knock on the door of an remoted farmhouse in the course of the evening. And though it’s solely March, “Hokum” will virtually actually be a contender for the title in 2026. The centerpiece scare in “Hokum” doesn’t stray too removed from “Oddity”: It additionally takes place in an enclosed house, in the dead of night, with one thing inexplicable and terrifying leaping out of the shadows. However the modifying, sound design, manufacturing design, and cinematography on this sequence are so well-executed that it nonetheless manages to shock and delight.
That is McCarthy’s third characteristic, and up to now, each one in all his motion pictures has improved on the final. All three are supernatural morality tales with themes of guilt and punishment (that’s Irish Catholicism for you), an curiosity in folklore, and a fixation on creepy dolls. “Hokum” takes place on Halloween, at a haunted lodge within the Irish countryside filled with unsettling ambiance and surrounded by goats who assault the visitors’ automobiles whereas they’re tripping on mushrooms. As a setting, it’s each deeply unusual and intuitively appropriate, an evocative location for McCarthy’s Twenty first-century storybook story.
Every of McCarthy’s movies will get somewhat larger in scale as properly, and “Hokum” marks his first collaboration with a Hollywood actor. Adam Scott stars as Ohm Bauman, a bitter alcoholic novelist who travels to the Billberry Woods Lodge to procrastinate on ending the final e-book in his standard “Conquistador Trilogy.” (It’s a relatable motivation, a minimum of to the writers within the viewers.) He’s additionally there to scatter the ashes of his dad and mom, each of whom died when he was very younger.
His tragic backstory doesn’t excuse what a jerk Ohm is to the lodge’s bellboy Alby (Will O’Connell), nonetheless, and provided that it is a Damian McCarthy film, his comeuppance is certain to return. Typically forged as a pleasant man, it’s enjoyable to see Scott as an unlikable asshole, a job he performs with withering deadpan directness. A darkish and dramatic improvement early on makes Ohm a little extra sympathetic, main him again to the lodge in quest of a bartender named Fiona (Florence Ordesh), who informed him the spooky legend of the witch who haunts the lodge’s honeymoon suite.
When Ohm arrives, he’s informed that Fiona is lacking, and nobody has seen her for the reason that evening of the lodge’s Halloween social gathering. An area eccentric (David Wilmot) suspects foul play and tells Ohm that he is aware of she’s lifeless as a result of he noticed her ghost within the lodge foyer just a few nights earlier than. Ohm is skeptical, in fact. However he owes Fiona a favor, and so he breaks into the honeymoon suite to seek for her. Quickly, he’s trapped on this musty house on their own — a minimum of till the nightmare rabbits and skittering black-eyed specters emerge after darkish.
That is the place “Hokum” actually hits its stride. The suite may be very intentionally laid out, which provides the fright sequences the texture of a online game, or maybe an immersive expertise that encourages one to select up objects and discover totally different areas. The tightest of those is a dumbwaiter that supposedly results in nothing, though we all know this isn’t true from the second Scott sticks his head into it and appears down. When he ultimately crawls inside, McCarthy and DP Colm Hogan lower off the composition on the sides, utilizing shadow and darkness to primarily crop the picture from 16:9 right into a claustrophobic 4:3.
These cramped areas are contrasted with an eerie, expansive whooshing on the soundtrack, which is layered with choking sobs and ominous moaning low within the combine. Sometimes, the clear, loud sound of a bell cuts by means of the combination, jolting the viewer again into the second. Mixed with cinematography that stays clear and legible even beneath low mild, and decisive cuts from editor Brian Phillip Davis, the clear, classical filmmaking contrasts properly with the ominous vacancy of the movie’s shadowy corners and the ambiguous thriller of its central plot, preserving viewers off stability and on edge all through key scenes.
McCarthy loses focus after this symphony of tightly managed terror halfway by means of the second act, including somewhat an excessive amount of backstory and some too many scenes to the movie’s denouement. Nonetheless, when “Hokum” works, it actually works. It’s easy, however that’s OK — we’ve had numerous makes an attempt to “elevate” the horror style over the previous decade or so. As an alternative, it’s only a good old school ghost story, the type you’d inform over a campfire to scare youngsters. And it’s a hair-raising one at that.
Grade: B+
“Hokum premiered at SXSW 2026. Neon releases the movie in theaters Might 1.
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