Damian McCarthy’s Hokum is being hailed as one of the buzziest horror films of 2026 — and with good reason. It lures you in with Irish folklore and a supernatural witch, then quietly dismantles you with something far more terrifying: decades of unresolved guilt. Here’s everything that happens and what it all means.
Hokum : Overview
| Detail | Info |
|---|---|
| Film | Hokum |
| Director | Damian McCarthy |
| Lead | Adam Scott as Ohm Bauman |
| Release Date | May 1, 2026 |
| Runtime | 101 minutes |
| Genre | Supernatural horror / psychological drama |
| Setting | Remote Bilberry Woods Hotel, Ireland |
The Setup — Who Is Ohm and Why Is He There?
Adam Scott plays Ohm, a pretentious author whose tragic past does little to excuse his awful behaviour — at least initially. He travels to a quaint hotel in Ireland to scatter his parents’ ashes, quickly establishing himself as a menace, even burning a fan who wants to follow in his footsteps as a writer.
Ohm’s trip has two purposes: to say goodbye to his parents, who passed years prior, and to finish the final book in his “Conquistador Trilogy.” In the opening moments, we witness his affinity for bleak endings — his eponymous conquistador is searching for treasure in a vast desert, but his map gets stuck in a bottle just as he nears the end of his quest.
Underneath all the prickliness is a man in serious pain. Ohm accidentally shot his mother with his father’s revolver as a child — too young for a conviction, he has been living with that bitter reality for decades. His father then drank himself into an early grave because of it. Inverse
The Real Villain — Mal, Not the Witch
This is where Hokum pulls its most satisfying trick. While the witch of the Bilberry Woods is portrayed as the ultimate evil in the movie’s marketing and in the first half, in reality she is closer to a force of nature than an out-and-out villain. The real villain is Mal, the hotel manager, who murdered the pregnant hotel bartender Fiona as a means of covering up his own affair — drugging her, dragging her up to the honeymoon suite, and sending her down to the hotel’s sealed-off basement in a broken dumbwaiter to die a slow death. MovieWeb
After teaming up with local vagabond Jerry, Ohm discovers the truth about Fiona’s disappearance. Mal, the hotel employee and son-in-law of the former owner, had an affair with Fiona, got her pregnant, and decided to get rid of her so no one would find out. Time
The Witch’s True Role — Justice, Not Terror
The witch is set up by the film’s earliest moments in Ireland, with the old hotel owner telling a story about her habit of dragging wayward souls into a hellish afterlife — a witch successfully captured and contained within the wedding suite, which has remained abandoned ever since.
But she is not purely evil. Mal is drawn down to the basement in his pursuit of Ohm, at which point he is shackled by the witch and literally dragged into a portal to Hell, where his soul will theoretically be tormented for his crimes. It’s a clever and satisfying twist — making the witch much more significant than a ghoul generating jump scares. MovieWeb
Ohm’s Emotional Ending — Guilt, Forgiveness, and a New Beginning
While Mal is dragged into a gruesome fate for his actions, Ohm finds absolution, forgiveness, and a way forward. His mother’s ghost appears at the critical moment — rather than condemning him, she forgives him, giving him the strength to break free of both the literal and figurative chains holding him captive.
The symbolism extends to his writing. After escaping the hotel, he changes the ending of his Conquistador story — the Conquistador is now holding the boy and asking for forgiveness, aligning with Ohm’s ability to move on with life.
The film wraps up with Ohm recuperating in a hospital — a sign that he has made it through the ordeal intact, both physically and mentally. Rejecting a bottle of whiskey, together with a more relaxed and composed demeanor, signals a changing perspective. Sportskeeda
The Central Theme — Guilt as the True Monster
Hokum ultimately explores guilt through its central characters. Ohm is consumed by remorse over the accident that shaped his life; Jerry, who once killed his terminally ill wife at her request, had come to terms with the weight of his actions. Mal, by contrast, shows little to no guilt and offers hollow apologies without taking accountability — and that absence of remorse leads directly to his destruction. PRIMETIMER
The film’s very title is telling — hokum means deceptive or insincere talk, pointing to the lies characters tell themselves and others to avoid confronting the truth of their actions.
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