There’s worst things than strangers and oddballs!
If you caught Damian McCarthy’s Oddity and loved it like the little gem it is (listen to our thoughts in Episode 385), the trailer for Hokum suggests patience for it’s follow-up is about to be worth it.
Damian, the Irish filmmaker behind Caveat and Oddity, returns with a new supernatural horror from NEON, and that bold, creeping style is immediately palpable. Remote location. Dread that simmers slowly, until it boils over. There’s worst things than strangers and oddballs!
Hokum stars Adam Scott as novelist Ohm Bauman, who travels to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes. The staff’s tales of an ancient witch haunting the honeymoon suite take hold of his mind, and soon disturbing visions and a shocking disappearance pull him into a confrontation with the darkest corners of his past.
Adam is a long way from Pawnee. After years of iconic comedy work in Parks and Recreation and Party Down, he made an early genre pivot with Krampus back in 2015. Now, more than a decade later, the Severance star is back in horror territory. It’s a pairing that makes a certain kind of sense. Damian’s work tends to center on ordinary, skeptical folks who slowly lose the ability to dismiss what they’re seeing, and Adam has made a career out of playing exactly that type.
For fans of Damian’s previous work, there are already things worth scrutinizing. That drumming rabbit toy from Caveat turned up in Oddity, and eagle-eyed viewers are already clocking what looks like the haunted hotel bell from Oddity making an appearance in the Hokum teaser (below). Whether Damian is building a shared universe or just enjoys recurring symbols of dread is an open question, but it’s the kind of cool junk that rewards keen eyes.
NEON acquired worldwide rights to the film out of TIFF.
Hokum premieres at SXSW on March 14, 2026, and will be available in U.S. theaters on May 1, 2026