(WARNING: This film contains scenes depicting suicide, self-harm and disturbing imagery.)
“Hokum” was my most anticipated horror movie of 2026, and it sure as heck did not disappoint. “Hokum” is a wonderful celebration of Irish folklore.
“Hokum” follows a novelist named Ohm Bauman as he retreats to a remote inn to scatter his parents’ ashes. While there, he’s told tales of a witch that haunts the honeymoon suite. Soon, disturbing visions and a shocking disappearance force him to confront dark corners of his past and the true darkness that lays inside him.
The Good: Adam Scott is phenomenal in this movie. He feels like an actual broken individual, and not at any point does his performance feel forced or watered down. He gives just the right amount of effort to come off as a genuine lost soul trapped in darkness.
The hunted/old Irish aesthetic is beautiful and stunning. The vibe stays about the same throughout the entire movie.
Most of the movie has a dark orange or white tint, making everything that’s neither of those colors stand out in an incredible and bright way.
The lighting also gives the same vibe of a “Silent Hill”-esque horror game, with most scenes only being visible by lantern light.
This movie is also great at making you feel for its main character. You start actually feeling for the character when you find out why he wanted to kill himself. You get to actually feel for the character and understand him as more than a “rich deep writer” but more of a man haunted by his past.
“Hokum’s” witch design is very unique, with it being either a Nosferatu-looking old woman, a donkey-human hybrid, or a woman in a long silk and dirty dress who drags chains. The thing I love most about these witch designs is they all are interesting to look at and they all have their own reason for why they look the way they do. (The donkey version was my favorite.)
The score is breathtaking. It blends classical with creepy in a way where it’ll get your skin to start to crawl and your spine to tighten up, with every beat feeling chilling somehow.
The Middle: The cinematography was overall amazing, but this movie feels like it has two people behind the camera. You have a guy who knows what he’s doing with every shot he takes being beautiful and artistic, and then you have got the other guy, who thinks he’s so deep with every shot he takes, but in all reality he takes a bunch of boring or just meh shots that feel too generic for such a beautiful-looking movie. By no means is this movie shot badly. It’s really only 20% of the movie that looks this way.
The witch is kind of underused. The witch is used a lot during the middle part of the movie, but it’s kind of left out during the final act, with it only reappearing during the very end of the movie when she’s dragging the main bad guy to hell maybe. It’s not that it’s a problem. It’s that I thought she would be a bigger part of the movie.
The Ho-Con’s (see what I did there): I really have no problem with this movie. It checks all my boxes – good acting, good writing and a good story. The only thing I could possibly think of that I found bad is the 20% of the shots that looked too bland or just bad.
“Hokum” is an artistic and beautiful modern witch story, and I can easily see it being a horror classic of the 2020s with “Longlegs,” “Weapons,” “Talk To Me,” and “Barbarian.”
I give “Hokum” ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2 or a 8.8/10. It is a definite must see in theaters (preferably alone).