A Haunted Hotel Horror That Refuses To Be The Shining
On paper, Damian McCarthy’s new Hokum horror movie sounds like it’s begging for a The Shining comparison: a horror novelist, a remote inn, and a building steeped in supernatural menace. Yet McCarthy is adamant that his latest Damian McCarthy film is “nothing like” Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King. Hokum follows Ohm (Adam Scott), who travels to a rural hotel to scatter his parents’ ashes, only to discover it’s haunted by an ancient witch and populated by unsettling locals. McCarthy admits he initially felt tempted to “lift” some of The Shining’s iconic scares before deciding that its hotel has “its own voice” and should be avoided rather than echoed. Instead of leaning into that classic template, Hokum aims for its own identity, continuing the filmmaker’s track record after Caveat and Oddity while deliberately stepping out of King’s long shadow.
How The Shining Defined Haunted Hotel Horror
Stephen King’s The Shining, and Kubrick’s stark adaptation, have become the default lens for haunted hotel horror. The isolated resort, a fragile writer unraveling in the off-season, and the sense that the building itself is a sentient evil have set expectations for every story that dares to lock its characters in a creepy corridor. Any new haunted hotel horror is almost automatically filed by viewers as a The Shining comparison, regardless of whether it shares King’s themes of alcoholism, family violence, and psychic trauma. That cultural weight can be both blessing and curse: invoking instant dread, but also threatening to flatten new films into homage or pastiche. When McCarthy says he “really can’t do anything that was done in that,” he is acknowledging how thoroughly King’s Overlook has claimed certain images and ideas, forcing contemporary storytellers to find fresh angles or risk feeling redundant.
Hokum’s Different Tone: Witch Lore, Weird Locals, And Dark Comedy
What distinguishes Hokum is not just its plot, but the mood McCarthy is chasing. Rather than a slow, suffocating psychological spiral, the film centers on a horror novelist confronting an inn haunted by an ancient witch, with the premises doubling as a magnet for eccentric townsfolk. That setup shifts the horror from domestic breakdown to folkloric curse and community strangeness, closer to a witchy, rural nightmare than a cabin-fever tragedy. McCarthy also emphasizes that Hokum hides a comedic edge beneath its scares. He describes wanting audiences to get “a good scare along with a few laughs,” and to find something worth revisiting instead of a purely punishing experience. For Stephen King fans used to his bleakest work, this blend of scares and sly humor offers a different flavor of haunted hotel horror—less about nihilistic doom, more about eerie entertainment laced with character-driven oddity.
The Post-King Challenge: Creating Haunted Spaces Without Copying
McCarthy’s insistence on steering clear of The Shining highlights a broader challenge: crafting haunted locations in a landscape where King’s influence is everywhere. From hotel halls to cursed small towns and labyrinthine houses, King’s work has become a shared language for horror, shaping both readers and writers. Contemporary authors openly cite him as a foundational presence, the way some mention The Gunslinger as a book that influences “just about every word” they write. That ubiquity means newer films like Hokum must navigate a tricky line—honoring the genre’s heritage while resisting easy imitation. By foregrounding Irish-set witch lore, an outsider protagonist, and sly humor, McCarthy signals that haunted spaces can be reimagined as sites of cultural specificity and tonal experimentation. The result is a film that acknowledges King’s legacy by refusing to replay his greatest hits, instead inviting audiences into a different kind of cursed building.
Why Stephen King Fans Should Still Check Into Hokum
For Stephen King fans, Hokum may not be a direct homage, but it speaks to many of the same instincts that make King’s stories enduring. The protagonist is a writer confronting buried family history; the setting is an isolated inn with a secret past; the horror grows from the clash between ordinary life and ancient, supernatural forces. At the same time, McCarthy’s commitment to a distinct tone—less crushing than some “very heavy” horror films, more playful without losing its bite—offers a fresh experience for viewers who love haunted hotel horror but don’t want a reheated Overlook. King readers who appreciate his stranger, more expansive works, or who enjoy seeing familiar tropes twisted into new shapes, may find Hokum a welcome evolution: a reminder that haunted hotels can still surprise us when filmmakers stop trying to be The Shining and start being themselves.
