You recognize it has been a very good 12 months for horror films when a real hit nonetheless slips via the cracks. We spent the summer time on discourse over Obsession, The Backrooms, Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil, and The Finish of Oak Road, all of which pulled in nine-digit takes on the field workplace. Earlier than that, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple was a important if not a business success. Often horror followers must kind via indies for his or her style repair, however this 12 months has been a movable feast.
What’s fascinating in regards to the unfold in 2026 is that there is room for each kind of horror within the present wave. Solely a few these films qualify for the outdated “elevated horror” (learn: the true monster is trauma) designation. The remaining are good old school guts-and-gore flicks.
One 2026 hit that is elevated (often actually) is the Irish ghost story Hokum, which debuted in Could to rave evaluations and stable ticket gross sales. It made cash however wasn’t a blockbuster.
Trying on the 12 months in horror, Hokum managed to string a really explicit form of needle; it got here out two weeks earlier than Obsession and Backrooms went head-to-head on the field workplace, so it made its cash and received out earlier than the true competitors began. When you missed Hokum in the midst of all that, it is now streaming on Hulu, and it deserves a spot in your cinematic rotation within the run-up to Halloween.
Issues to do in Derry if you’re lifeless
Hokum has such a Stephen King-friendly premise that it is a shock to be taught he wasn’t concerned. As a substitute, Hokum was written and directed by Damian McCarthy, who beforehand made 2024’s Oddity and 2020’s Caveat.
Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott, Severance) is an American novelist who’s struggling to write down the conclusion to his well-liked trilogy. Left at a unfastened finish, he chooses to go to the lodge in rural Eire the place his late dad and mom spent their honeymoon. Initially, Ohm’s solely purpose is to go away his dad and mom’ ashes within the close by woods, however then he by accident stumbles into what is perhaps a homicide thriller, a ghost story, and/or a vivid hallucination.
Hokum could be described as a form of backwoods Irish Gothic, buying and selling castles and towers for an outdated lodge with a grotesque historical past. It is a cautious, deliberate movie that will get numerous mileage out of ominous silences and portraits of stillness. A number of critics have described Hokum as a haunted home film, however that does not strike me as totally correct. One thing is haunted, completely, however there are a number of candidates for what, who, and why.
It is value figuring out earlier than you begin that Hokum begins at a sluggish boil, centered on Scott as one of many nice disagreeable vacationers in cinematic historical past. It isn’t a film that is in any nice hurry to get the place it is going, and for some time, looks like a procession of building pictures. The primary half-hour specifically is often mistakable for a product of the tourism business. Go to lovely, rural Eire. You solely would possibly get murdered by lodge ghosts.
As soon as Hokum disengages its parking brake, it turns into an evocative thriller, a lot of which Scott has to hold throughout the end line. He spends numerous the movie solo and silent, so the film’s story will get informed via physique language, digicam angles, and point-of-view pictures. It is unusually prepared to belief its viewers, however it’d all be for nothing if Scott wasn’t as much as the problem.
There don’t look like too many items that particularly reward Scott’s efficiency, however Hokum is on a brief record of horror movies that will completely disintegrate on the runway with a much less expert actor on heart stage (see additionally Completely satisfied Dying Day, which piles an identical quantity on Jessica Rothe’s shoulders), and Scott pulls it off. It’s simple (not less than for me) to think about him as a Parks and Recreation man, however between Hokum and Severance, Scott has been actually piling up career-defining performances in the previous couple of years.
In a much less stacked 12 months, Hokum could be on the quick record for considered one of 2026’s greatest horror movies. Even so, it simply makes the highest 10. Now that it is obtainable on demand, it is value queuing it up as a part of your Halloween celebrations.
Hokum is now streaming on Hulu.