Hokum (2026) Review: A Small Town Secret Hides In The Walls And It’s Been Listening The Whole Time

source: tv.lk21

Synopsis:

Hokum (2026) is a Psychological Horror and Thriller film directed by Damian McCarthy. It was released on May 1, 2026, with a 107-minute runtime. The story follows Ohm Bauman, a successful horror novelist whose heart is completely shattered. He travels all the way to Ireland to scatter his parents’ ashes at the hotel where they once spent their honeymoon: the Bilberry Woods Hotel. Sounds sentimental, right? 

Here’s the catch. That isolated hotel comes with a dark legend: the “Cailleach,” an ancient witch rumored to still be lingering inside. At first, Ohm brushes it off as “hokum” - basically just bullshit. But the longer he stays, the weirder things get. Mysterious visions start creeping in, his nightmares feel way too real, and then a hotel staff member vanishes without a trace. Eventually, Ohm gets pulled into investigating the whole thing, and that’s when it cracks open his own buried trauma. So the big question is: is he actually being haunted by a ghost, or is it just his broken mental state reflecting back at him?

Critics have been praising the film’s atmosphere and the cast’s performances. The story itself feels classic, but it’s told in an elegant way - like if you mashed up The Shining with 1408. The downside, according to them, is that the structure is pretty conventional. Still, it scored 89% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

This film stars: Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Florence Ordesh and more.

In my opinion:

I decided to watch this movie because I kept seeing netizens recommending it as one of the top horror picks. Honestly, I was really hoping it’d be great. But in my opinion, it wasn’t “that great.” The mystery didn’t bite hard enough, and the scares leaned way too much on jump scares. There are also a few things that left me confused. Why did Bauman really go to that hotel? Was it purely to scatter his parents’ ashes, or was he trying to finish his writing? What’s the witch’s real origin story, and what’s her connection to Cob? How exactly was the Witch locked away in the Honeymoon Suite? Old Cob did tell her story as a creepy folktale early on, but it still felt vague. And then there’s the ending - I thought it was unclear.

Why unclear? Because is the witch even real, or is she just Bauman’s hallucination after Alby spiked his drink with Jerry’s “magic mushrooms”? Or was all the horror just a manifestation of Bauman’s guilt from his past? Again, in my view, the film’s story wasn’t clear enough for me - correct me if I’m wrong. At the start, the film felt super promising. I thought there’d be all these weird mysteries, and it’d be impossible to predict the ending. According to the dictionary, “hokum” means nonsense. After watching it through to the end, I felt kind of dumb because I still couldn’t grasp the actual core of the film. So… was the horror in this movie just nonsense after all? Haha...

Overall though, I do have to praise the choreography and the acting from the entire cast, especially Jerry. He nailed the role of that mysterious, unique, yet brave vagrant, especially in the scenes where he tries to save Bauman. I especially loved his performance during their first meeting in the forest. As for the visuals and audio? Not bad, not great. Just standard.

For me this one is 6.5/10.