A Haunted Hotel That Feels Like Coming Home to Fear
Hokum is a supernatural horror movie that feels instantly familiar in the best way: all creaky floorboards, shuttered hallways and shadows that seem to breathe. Irish writer-director Damian McCarthy, already a cult name for genre fans after Caveat and Oddity, trades sprawling mythology for a contained, haunted-hotel pressure cooker. Instead of a glossy resort, this inn is all mould, mildew and tattered drapery, a place that would never earn a five-star rating but is perfect for an atmospheric horror thriller. McCarthy leans on practical, tactile details and cobwebby production design to build dread slowly, then punctuates it with nasty jolts rather than endless jump scares. For viewers who grew up on old school ghost story classics, Hokum feels like someone dusted off a forgotten VHS and found it humming with new life—comfortable, in a creepy way, because you already know the rules of this cursed place.
Plot, Tone and the Pleasure of Creaky-Floorboard Scares
The Hokum horror review starts with its prickly heart: Ohm Bauman, a successful but misanthropic American author played by Adam Scott. Travelling to rural Ireland to scatter his parents’ ashes at the inn where they once honeymooned, he ends up in a very different kind of retreat. Locals whisper about a witch—or cailleach—haunting the locked honeymoon suite, and the hotel owner has even shut off the lift to keep guests away. When kind-hearted staff member Fiona disappears after a Halloween party, Ohm’s search pulls him into that forbidden top floor and a nightmarish dumb waiter that delivers some of the film’s most suffocating scenes. Tonally, Hokum balances folkloric menace with streaks of black comedy, using Scott’s dry timing without ever undercutting the tension. The result is less a rollercoaster of shocks than a slow, cold hand on your shoulder that never quite lets go.
Real-Life Anxieties Twisted Into Nightmares
What makes this Damian McCarthy film linger is how everyday fears seep into its ghostly terrors. Hokum tracks Ohm’s dark night of the soul: grief over his parents, guilt hinted at in the way he scatters their ashes, and a career built on bleak endings that have made him emotionally closed off. McCarthy blurs the line between psychological and supernatural horror, letting the haunted hotel become a reflection of Ohm’s inner rot. The witch stories and talk of curses, LSD-laced milk and magic mushrooms from the local hermit sound like nonsense to the rational writer—until they start mirroring his own unraveling. Spiritual disturbance often rises from human apathy, cruelty or wilful ignorance, making the living feel more frightening than the dead. By the time Ohm stumbles toward an unexpectedly hopeful resolution, the movie has mapped his personal trauma onto every groaning corridor and whispered threat.
Old-School Frights, 2020s Craft
Though steeped in classic haunted-house tropes, Hokum stands out among 2020s horror for how precisely it’s assembled. McCarthy favours patient pacing over instant gratification, letting tension accumulate in long walks down dim hallways and in the ominous quiet of that sealed honeymoon suite. Colm Hogan’s cinematography and the work of the production and costume teams drape the frame in damp, decaying textures that you can almost smell. Composer Joseph Bishara, known for Insidious and The Conjuring, layers the soundtrack with scraping strings and uneasy, Ligeti-like textures, reserving pockets of lyrical empathy for Ohm’s most vulnerable moments. Jump scares are used sparingly, positioned more like exclamation marks in a ghost story than theme-park ride stings. It’s character-focused horror: Adam Scott’s unsympathetic, slowly humanised performance becomes the anchor, making each supernatural intrusion feel like an attack on a very real, damaged person.
Comfort Horror for Malaysian Ghost-Story Fans
For Malaysian viewers, Hokum is the sort of atmospheric horror thriller you seek out when you’re tired of over-cut trailers and instant shocks. If you enjoy old school ghost story films, possession tales and the creeping dread of titles like The Conjuring or Insidious—but wish they’d slow down and let you sit with the fear—this will feel like comfort horror: familiar ingredients, carefully cooked. The film may frustrate viewers who prefer relentless pacing, elaborate mythology or constant spectacle; its haunted-hotel setup is intentionally contained, its scares more about mood than mayhem. But if tactile settings, folklore-tinged chills and flawed, emotionally rich protagonists are your thing, Hokum is worth tracking down on digital platforms or genre festivals whenever it appears locally. It’s the perfect late-night watch when you want something shivery, melancholy and strangely reassuring to haunt you after the credits roll.