A reclusive U.S. novelist, Ohm Bauman, comes to a remote Irish hotel to scatter his parents’ ashes at the site of their honeymoon, believing that it was a fleeting moment of happiness in an otherwise tragic family history. Some of the staff, however, insist that the honeymoon suite is haunted. When Fiona, the hotel’s bartender, disappears, Ohm (Adam Scott) sets out to find her, probing deeper into the hotel’s hidden depths and sordid past.

This is the premise of Irish director Damian McCarthy’s Hokum, a folk-horror film in U.S. theaters May 1 that builds on his reputation as one of the genre’s most compelling voices. McCarthy here blends Ireland’s rich folklore tradition with its own shameful history to ask what it means to truly reckon with guilt and whether a conscience can ever be fully absolved. For Ohm, that requires a harrowing visit to the hotel’s basement. For Ireland, that requires an unflinching pursuit of truth and accountability—something that McCarthy’s aggrieved ghosts argue has yet to happen.

A reclusive U.S. novelist, Ohm Bauman, comes to a remote Irish hotel to scatter his parents’ ashes at the site of their honeymoon, believing that it was a fleeting moment of happiness in an otherwise tragic family history. Some of the staff, however, insist that the honeymoon suite is haunted. When Fiona, the hotel’s bartender, disappears, Ohm (Adam Scott) sets out to find her, probing deeper into the hotel’s hidden depths and sordid past.

This is the premise of Irish director Damian McCarthy’s Hokum, a folk-horror film in U.S. theaters May 1 that builds on his reputation as one of the genre’s most compelling voices. McCarthy here blends Ireland’s rich folklore tradition with its own shameful history to ask what it means to truly reckon with guilt and whether a conscience can ever be fully absolved. For Ohm, that requires a harrowing visit to the hotel’s basement. For Ireland, that requires an unflinching pursuit of truth and accountability—something that McCarthy’s aggrieved ghosts argue has yet to happen.

McCarthy’s previous films, Caveat (2020) and Oddity (2024), explore similar themes, and Hokum is replete with callbacks. There are witches, bellhops, crossbows, and creepy-eyed rabbits; there are expansive views of the Irish countryside set against claustrophobic interiors. McCarthy has a particular fascination with light and shadow. Each of his films features an extended sequence of near-total darkness in which characters navigate corridors in search of escape—from their past sins and the terrifying creatures pursuing them.

Most of all, women occupy a central and troubling role in McCarthy’s films: frequently murdered, disappeared, or otherwise silenced. They are depicted as spiritually or psychologically compromised, which is used by their tormentors to justify their gruesome fates. These women pursue revenge—or, perhaps more accurately, justice—through elements of folklore. Ghosts, spells, and haunted objects serve as supernatural forces for liberation where man-made moral structures fall short.

A figurine of a child screaming in terror, from Hokum.NEON

Violence against women is hardly unique to Irish horror. In U.S. horror, the final girl—the last living member of a group who confronts the killer—often reflects the anxieties of her time, embodying a generation’s concerns about morality, sexuality, and the future. She is typically set apart: virginal, vice-averse, and quicker to recognize the signs of a killer than her peers. Whether the final girl ultimately rescues herself or is rescued, she is resourceful, morally disciplined, and perceptive. For that, she deserves to live.

Irish horror is more........

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