There is a very specific kind of low-budget horror movie that arrives with modest expectations, spends a little under two hours suffocating you with dread, and leaves you staring at the end credits trying to figure out if you actually loved it or if you were just paralyzed by how creepy it was. Damian McCarthy’s Hokum is exactly that kind of movie. It does not try to hold your hand, it does not bother with a warm opening act, and it definitely does not care if you leave the theater feeling comfortable.
The setup follows Ohm Bauman, an embittered, alcoholic horror novelist played by Adam Scott. Ohm is stuck on the ending of his latest book and generally holds a pretty low opinion of everyone around him. He decides Halloween weekend is the ideal time to trek out to the Bilberry Woods Hotel, a damp, fading inn in West Cork, Ireland. His official reason for being there is to scatter his late parents' ashes near a redwood tree from an old photograph of his mother. But almost as soon as he checks in, he realizes he has walked straight into a weird local ecosystem. The hotel staff keeps dropping offhand comments about the boarded-up honeymoon suite down the hall and the witch allegedly trapped inside it.
What makes Hokum work right off the bat is how completely prickly and unpleasant Adam Scott plays his lead. People who only know Scott from his deadpan workplace comedies or high-concept TV roles might be thrown off by the vibe here. Ohm is sarcastic, rude to the locals, and deeply self-pitying. Mainstream horror usually feels the need to give troubled protagonists a redeeming spark or a heroic impulse so the audience roots for them. McCarthy skips that entirely. Ohm is just a broken, selfish guy who makes awful interpersonal decisions, which makes his eventual collapse into paranoia feel surprisingly real.
The movie spends a lot of its first half just letting Scott wander through gloomy hallways, drink alone in his room, and dismiss every warning he gets. He scoffs at local lore, treats the hotel workers like background noise, and generally acts like he is the smartest guy in every room he enters. The dialogue has a rough, natural rhythm. People stutter, misread social cues, repeat themselves, and talk past each other. You don't get long speeches explaining the history of the inn in clean detail. Instead, you have to piece together the local history through awkward bar conversations, half-heard rumors, and a creepy tape recorder containing leftover voice messages.
McCarthy shoots all of this with an oppressive, flat visual style. Working again with cinematographer Colm Hogan, the visual choices favor dim wall sconces, a lighter's flame cutting through haze, and dark corners where your eyes keep hunting for things that shouldn't be there. There are no glossy digital flourishes or loud retro synth tracks trying to force nostalgia. Everything looks cold, wet, and slightly decayed. In a genre currently obsessed with polished, neon-lit aesthetics, there is something refreshing about a movie that relies on static camera setups and heavy, suffocating silence.
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Things take a hard turn when Ohm hits rock bottom in his hotel room. He is saved from a suicide attempt by Fiona, one of the hotel employees who happens to interrupt him at the right moment. Shortly after that interaction, Fiona vanishes. The local men and the hotel manager seem weirdly resigned to her disappearance, brushing it off or hinting that she stepped out of line. But Ohm, driven by a messy combination of guilt, stubbornness, and a desperate need to return the favor, starts poking around places he was explicitly told to avoid. That eventually leads him straight toward the locked honeymoon suite everyone insists is off-limits.
When the supernatural elements finally stop hiding in the background and start forcing their way into the physical space, Ohm doesn't suddenly turn into a brave monster hunter. He reacts with the same annoyed, stubborn disbelief he applies to everything else in his life. Even when strange hallucinations start warping his surroundings and the ghost of a witch enters the picture, he stumbles forward out of sheer hardheadedness rather than heroism. That refusal to play into traditional horror tropes gives the movie a grounded punch. The tension doesn't come from big CGI spectacles; it comes from watching an arrogant man realize he is totally out of his depth against forces that don't care about his logic.
That said, the middle section isn't without its stumbles. McCarthy gets so enamored with building ambient atmosphere that he lets the narrative stall out in places. A midnight search through a locked storage wing drags on for several minutes longer than necessary, and a scene involving a silhouette in a reflection, while cool visually, feels a little repetitive by the time it finishes. You get the sense the editor was hesitant to trim long, single-take camera setups because they looked so moody, even when the plot was standing completely still.
The third act shifts gears into a tight, claustrophobic nightmare once Ohm finally gets inside the honeymoon suite. The scare setups here rely almost entirely on perspective and negative space. The camera often stays locked right over Scott's shoulder, forcing you to stare into pitch-black doorways alongside him. It avoids relying on endless loud jump scares. Instead, it lets horrifying visuals sit in the frame just long enough for your brain to register what you are looking at, including a bizarre rabbit-suited figure that taps directly into the same uncanny imagery McCarthy used in his earlier work like Caveat and Oddity.
The resolution is blunt and leaves a few background details unresolved. Viewers who need every lore thread neatly tied up with an explanatory monologue at the end are probably going to walk away annoyed. But a tidy explanation would have wrecked the vibe. The ending accepts that some local folklore and personal trauma don't have clean closures, leaving you with an unsettling feeling that lingers well after the lights come up.
Scott carries the entire structure on his back, giving what is easily his best dramatic work in years. He leans into the ugly, unlikable parts of Ohm without trying to make him sympathetic, which makes his gradual psychological unraveling much more compelling. The supporting cast of Irish character actors fills out the edges of the hotel naturally, giving the impression of a small community that has been keeping quiet about the same ugly secrets for generations.
The sound design also deserves a lot of credit. The musical score is sparse and mostly stays out of the way, letting the creaking floorboards, wind whistling through window frames, and the distant hum of plumbing do the heavy lifting. When the ambient noise cuts out completely during key moments, the sudden silence creates more panic than a screeching orchestra ever could.
Hokum isn't trying to reinvent horror, but it executes its haunted hotel setup with sharp precision, great atmosphere, and a terrific lead performance. It is uncomfortable, gloomy, and remarkably effective at getting under your skin. If you have a tolerance for slow-burn pacing, prickly characters, and stories that leave their darkest questions unanswered, it is well worth your time. Just don't go in expecting a neat bow on top.
For physical media fans picking this up on home video, the physical release hits shelves on August 11th with a 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray package that gives the movie’s murky visual palette plenty of room to breathe. On the disc front, the extra content is fairly straightforward, leading with an audio commentary track from writer-director Damian McCarthy. Hearing McCarthy break down his process is a genuine treat if you appreciate low-budget ingenuity, as he walks through the logistical headaches of shooting in tight, dimly lit spaces and how he engineered specific set pieces on a limited budget without leaning on cheap digital clean-up.
Beyond the commentary, the disc packs in a roughly sixteen-minute behind-the-scenes documentary that offers a solid look at the physical production. It features quick interviews with Adam Scott and the rest of the cast talking through their character prep, alongside footage of the crew piecing together the hotel set. The strangest and easily coolest inclusion is a standalone two-minute extra titled "Jack the Donkey, A Family Favorite," which presents the eerie, uncanny children's television show segment featured briefly during the movie in its full, unedited form. Rounded out by the original teaser and theatrical trailers, it is a tight, well-curated disc setup that makes the August 11th physical release worth grabbing for your shelf.
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