If you know Adam Scott for his comic roles in Step Brothers, “Parks and Recreation” or “Party Down,” or even for his more serious turn in “Severance,” you probably don’t think of him as a “scream king.” But that’s what Phantasmag recently called the actor, noting that Hokum is his seventh horror film.
Written and directed by Irish filmmaker Damian McCarthy (Caveat, Oddity), Hokum gives Scott a starring role well suited to his trademark prickly touchiness: a famous author who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, or at all.
The deal
Novelist Ohm Bauman (Scott) is struggling to find the right ending for his best-selling Conquistador series. Also, he might be haunted. In search of a fresh perspective, he decides it’s time to scatter his parents’ ashes at the inn in Ireland where they honeymooned.
At the rustic, rambling Bilberry Woods Hotel, Ohm meets eccentrics galore. There’s the owner (Brendan Conroy), who gleefully terrifies children with tales of witches; his uptight son-in-law and desk clerk (Peter Coonan); an aspiring writer bellhop (Will O’Connell) who begs Ohm to read his manuscript; and unhoused Jerry (David Wilmot), who lives in the nearby woods and offers Ohm the local psychedelic mushrooms.
Ohm proceeds to alienate everyone on the premises except Jerry and friendly bartender Fiona (Florence Ordesh), who tells him the honeymoon suite has been locked up because of a rumored haunting. After Fiona does him a good turn and then goes missing, Ohm puts aside his usual selfishness to search for her inside the forbidden rooms.
Will you like it?
If you’re fed up with minimalist “vibes” horror and want a spooky story with a lot of plot, Hokum may be for you. Just be aware that, like many movies in this vein (Zach Cregger’s Oscar-winning Weapons comes to mind), what it gains in complexity it loses in fear factor.
The movie’s first half wanders for a while in search of a central conflict. It’s entertaining to watch Ohm insult nearly everybody he encounters, and the unstable-writer-plus-creepy-hotel scenario evokes such celebrated precursors as Barton Fink and The Shining. Yet the screenplay doesn’t give us the strongest sense of what Ohm wants, how his tragic personal history connects to his current authorial dilemma or why he commits the desperate act that finally sets the plot in motion.
Once Ohm sneaks into the honeymoon suite, however, Hokum finally locks in. Most of the film’s second half takes place on this spacious set, which production designer Til Frohlich has appointed with such loving details as carved cupids, filmy gothic bed-curtains, a hot tub full of black goo, and a creaky dumbwaiter to the basement (or possibly to hell).
McCarthy’s compositions make deft use of this limited space to create suspense. The jump scares are cleverly blocked, and one was original enough to draw a gasp from me. Once our protagonist is trapped (inevitably) in the haunted place, he’s no passive reactor, either. Hokum shifts smoothly into survival horror mode, with Ohm making ingenious use of various found objects — plus folk knowledge — in his efforts to escape.
While the supporting cast is excellent, Scott deserves credit for keeping us engaged during lengthy scenes in which Ohm is the only living person on-screen. The actor’s darting eyes and preternaturally alert air, which have served him well in playing all sorts of easily provoked characters, show us the gears in Ohm’s brain turning. Viewers primed to appreciate Scott’s talent for making unlikable characters likable will savor the performance.
Buying into Ohm’s internal evolution is harder. Although the scenes with the wannabe writer bellhop ring true (what writer hasn’t been on one end of such an exchange?), Hokum is no Misery. It leans on outdated movie stereotypes of the lifestyle of literary lions: Based on the corny adventure scene from his novel that opens the movie, it’s tough to imagine Ohm being a household name. McCarthy never offers enough details to turn this implausibility into a purposeful joke — it’s simply part of the film’s pervasive retro stylization.
That aesthetic, too, puts us at a slight distance, so that McCarthy’s film keeps our brains engaged while rarely triggering a primal sense of terror. Whatever secret ingredient makes the scariest stories cling to our unconscious and reappear in our nightmares, Hokum runs short of it. At its heart, it’s more cozy mystery with several dollops of supernatural peril than descent into the underworld.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, though. Given a theatrical landscape in which horror is often the only original content amid franchise retreads, we can and should embrace its infinite variety, and fans of hospitality horror will want to check in.
If you like this, try…
Oddity (2024; AMC+, Disney+, Hulu, YouTube Primetime, rentable): In McCarthy’s previous film, a blind medium is determined to solve her sister’s murder with the aid of a mysterious curio.
The Innkeepers (2011; Kanopy, Philo, PLEX, Pluto TV, Prime Video, Sling TV, Tubi, YouTube Primetime, rentable): For more hospitality industry horror with local color, try Ti West’s film in which the employees of a shuttering New England inn make the mistake of exploring the basement.
Barbarian (2022; fuboTV, rentable): While typically less gothic, Airbnb rental homes can also offer plenty of scares, as Cregger proved in his breakout film. Like Hokum, it’s a horror movie in which regular people tend to be scarier than anything monstrous or supernatural.
This article appears in May 13 • 2026.
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