Hokum (2026)

Cheap jumpscares: the lazy way out This is yet another prime example of the damage Shyamalan has inflicted on contemporary, supernatural-based cinema and plot-driven horror. Damian McCarthy has once again resorted to involuntary physiological reactions triggered by auditory overexposure. It is a bargain-bin technique that dilutes any chance of genuine suspense by drowning out the visual experience with abrupt volume spikes and sudden chords—designed solely to startle the audience through mundane, utterly played-out stimuli. In other words, what they…

Hokum has a rather irritating problem: some of its best ideas seem to belong to films it never actually gets around to making. Damian McCarthy’s remote Irish hotel gives us a haunted honeymoon suite, a huge buried cellar, a local witch, chalk sigils, protective circles, psychedelic mushrooms, a missing woman and a novelist carrying some very substantial parental baggage. Any two of those might comfortably sustain a horror film. Hokum keeps introducing another one. What it does extraordinarily well is frighten you. Faces appear from darkness, figures…

Oh my God did this movie suck! Boring, obtuse and overall lacking direction. I had high hopes with the backdrop of Ireland and the hopes of folklore based storytelling... And if that is what you are hoping for - look elsewhere.