Irish writer-director Damian McCarthy is having a strange month at the multiplex. His new 2026 haunted hotel flick Hokum is currently outperforming global box office expectations. That financial success is sending a wave of new viewers scrambling backward to find his earlier, tighter work, particularly 2024’s genuinely terrifying Oddity.
Hokum stars Adam Scott as Ohm Bauman, an alcoholic American horror author struggling with a looming book deadline. He travels to a remote, rural Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes. Things go poorly. He soon develops a dangerous obsession with a locked honeymoon suite that supposedly houses a 400-year-old witch.
Scott delivers a deadpan, grounded performance that anchors the eerie first half of the film. But the critical consensus is incredibly split. While audiences are buying tickets, reviewers are tearing the final act apart. According to an Indian Express review of the film, the project ultimately collapses into a dreary, bloated, and convoluted narrative in its later acts.
It is easy to see why critics are frustrated. McCarthy built a fiercely loyal following with his earlier micro-budget films, Caveat and Oddity. Both relied on intensely claustrophobic settings, cursed objects, and thick atmosphere rather than sprawling mythology.
He isn’t finished with this specific universe just yet. During a recent Reddit AMA, McCarthy confirmed that Hokum fits into a larger thematic series of ghost stories all set in West Cork, Ireland. He also told fans that his next movie will be the fourth and final installment in this regional horror cycle.