Hokum lands on Hulu on October 10, which puts Damian McCarthy’s Irish ghost story on streaming exactly three weeks before Halloween. That is not an accident.
The film opened theatrically through NEON on May 1 and took $6.4 million in its first weekend, which is a real number for an Irish haunted-hotel picture with no franchise attached to it. It walked away with a B CinemaScore and a Certified Fresh rating, which for a spring horror release with an arthouse distributor behind it is close to a clean sweep.
A Witch in the Honeymoon Suite
Adam Scott plays Ohm Bauman, a novelist who travels to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes and gets pulled into the staff’s stories about a witch said to occupy the honeymoon suite. Visions follow. So does a disappearance, and then the part of his own past he came there to avoid.
The supporting bench is largely Irish and largely excellent: Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Brendan Conroy, Florence Ordesh, Michael Patric and Will O’Connell, with Austin Amelio of The Walking Dead also in the cast.
Where Damian McCarthy Came From
This is McCarthy’s third feature and his first with an American lead. Caveat in 2020 got him noticed by the people who notice things early. Oddity in 2024 got him everybody else, along with the Midnighter audience award at SXSW and the same prize at Overlook. Hokum premiered at SXSW in March, which is a tidy piece of symmetry for a director whose whole reputation rests on making very little money look like a great deal of dread. Oddity is still on Shudder if you want the homework first.
He is nominated for Best Screenplay at this year’s Chainsaw Awards for it, per Fangoria. Anyone who saw Oddity will understand why the writing is the thing being singled out.
October 10 drops Hokum into the thick of Hulu’s Halloween run, which is the best possible window for a film that works on a couch with the lights off. Our guide to the best horror movies on Hulu is refreshed every month, and this one goes on it the day it arrives.
