After strong positive notices at the SXSW Film Festival, where it had its world premiere, NEON has released the final trailer for “Hokum.” The new supernatural horror film from Damian McCarthy, the Irish filmmaker behind “Oddity” and “Caveat,” stars Adam Scott in a story that returns to the kind of locked-room dread McCarthy has been refining for a while now. The film premiered at SXSW in March and opens in theaters on May 1.
Scott stars as Ohm Bauman, a reclusive novelist who travels to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, only to get pulled into rumors about an ancient witch haunting the honeymoon suite. The cast also includes Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Florence Ordesh, Will O’Connell, Michael Patric, Brendan Conroy, and Austin Amelio.
McCarthy writes and directs, and that matters here because his films have begun to build a very specific reputation: patient setups, a nasty atmosphere, and scares that come from what a space is hiding rather than how loudly it announces itself. That already paid off at SXSW, where The Playlist’s review gave the film an A-grade, calling it “a throwback to classic horror movies.”
That is also the right lane for Scott, who gets to play a man carrying grief, guilt, and a steadily worsening sense that the place he picked for mourning has no interest in letting him leave quietly. “Hokum” opens May 1. Watch the trailer below.
