Don’t See Hokum This Weekend Until You Read This: Lore, Rabbits, and Adam Scott’s Darkest Role

LOS ANGELES — Pack your bags, but leave your skepticism at the door. Tomorrow, May 1, 2026, Damian McCarthy’s latest nightmare, Hokum, officially checks into US theaters via Neon.

If you’ve been following “Stan Twitter” lately, you know the vibe is pure, unadulterated dread. This isn’t just a movie release. It’s a coronation.

McCarthy, the twisted mind behind Caveat and Oddity, is completing what many are calling his unofficial “Trilogy of Terror,” and he’s doing it with a budget and a leading man that signal he’s ready for the big leagues.

The stakes for Neon are massive. They’ve played a brilliant “windowing strategy” here, building fever-pitch hype through a limited festival run—including a 97% Rotten Tomatoes debut—before dropping it into theaters for a prime spring weekend.

They aren’t dumping this on a streaming service for a quick “backend deal.” They want you in a dark room, surrounded by strangers, jumping at every creak of the Bilberry Woods Hotel.

It’s a bold bet on original horror in a market usually obsessed with reboots.

Here is the cold, hard truth. Most horror fans expect a hero they can root for. But in Hokum, we get Ohm Bauman.

He’s cynical.

He’s abrasive.

He’s an alcoholic horror writer played by Adam Scott who treats everyone like a nuisance.

Can McCarthy make us care about a man who seems to loathe the very genre he lives in? It’s a risky character study that might alienate the “jumpscare-only” crowd, but for the rest of us, it’s exactly why this is the must-see event of the season.

The Setup: A Honeymoon Suite from Hell

The premise is deceptively simple, then it gets weird. Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) travels to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes at the site of their honeymoon.

The Bilberry Woods Hotel is shutting down for the winter.

It’s empty.

It’s quiet.

It’s perfect for a man who wants to be left alone. But the hotel staff can’t stop talking about the “Honeymoon Suite.” It’s been bolted shut for decades.

According to Flickering Myth, the hotel owner, Mr. Cob, claims a witch is trapped inside who has a nasty habit of shackling children and dragging them to the underworld.

Ohm, being a professional cynic, calls it all “hokum.” He thinks it’s hackneyed material meant to drum up local business. Then, the friendly bartender Fiona (Florence Ordesh) vanishes. Suddenly, the “hokum” starts looking a lot like a crime scene.

The “McCarthy Canon” and Those Creepy Rabbits

If you’ve seen Oddity, you know McCarthy has a thing for terrifying imagery that lingers in your peripheral vision. Hokum leans heavily into the director’s established visual language. We’re talking about service bells, shadowy corridors, and, most importantly, rabbits.

As per the deep dive from BFI’s Sight and Sound, the film utilizes Irish hare folklore. In these legends, hares aren’t cute; they are shape-shifters with ties to the fairy folk and the “place unknown.”

McCarthy doesn’t use CGI for his monsters. He uses practical effects, animatronics, and “shadow-play” to make your skin crawl. When a rabbit appears on screen in a McCarthy film, it isn’t a good sign. It’s a signal that the rules of reality are about to break.

Why Adam Scott is the Secret Weapon

We usually see Adam Scott as the “likable nerd” or the “tortured office worker.”

In Hokum, he pivots hard. According to Variety, Scott took the role to subvert his own persona. His Ohm Bauman is a “rat bastard.” He’s rude to the bellboy. He’s dismissive of Jerry (David Wilmot), a local magic mushroom enthusiast who might be the only person telling the truth.

This casting is brilliant because it forces the audience to engage with the story differently.

We aren’t watching a “final girl” run from a killer. We are watching a broken man’s “psycho” as he tries to finish his latest book—The Conquistador Trilogy—while his own past catches up to him. The film actually opens with a surreal desert sequence from his book, a “holographic lead” that places us directly inside his cynical, violent imagination.

The “Puzzle Box” Narrative

McCarthy doesn’t tell a linear story. He builds a puzzle. Like Caveat, much of the film takes place in a single, isolated location that feels like an “escape room scenario.” The geography of the hotel is vital. One room leads to a memory; another leads to a “harrowing revelation.”

According to an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, McCarthy wanted to explore “hallucinatory visions” versus “supernatural reality.”

Is the witch real? Or is Ohm just having a breakdown fueled by grief and a spiked drink?

The movie dangles these questions over a “precipice of bleakness” before delivering an ending that—per Bloody Disgusting—is one of the most “folkloric freakouts” in recent memory.

Who Should Watch Hokum (and Who Should Stay Home)

This isn’t The Conjuring. It doesn’t want to entertain you with a roller coaster of scares. It wants to haunt you.

Watch this if:

You loved Severance and want to see Adam Scott go even darker.
You’re a fan of “A24-style” atmospheric horror.
You appreciate “practical effects” and nightmare-inducing production design.

Skip this if:

You’re looking for a family night. Plugged In officially rated this a “no-go for kids” due to themes of “ever-present death” and attempted suicide.
You hate ambiguity. McCarthy doesn’t hand out easy answers.
You’re easily triggered by “childhood trauma” narratives.

My take?

Hokum is a masterclass in tension.

It cements Damian McCarthy as the most interesting voice in horror right now.

It’s good news for the industry—proving that you can make a movie that is “fiendishly fun” while still having something profound to say about “self-forgiveness.”

Go see it on the biggest screen possible. And whatever you do, don’t ask for the key to the honeymoon suite.
Jogendra Mishra, Journalist

So, tell me in the comments—are you more afraid of the “Witch in the suite” or the fact that Adam Scott is playing a total jerk?