Hokum gives Severance star Adam Scott one of his nastiest screen turns yet. He plays Ohm Bauman, a depressed, mean-spirited American author who travels to Ireland to scatter his long-dead parents’ ashes and finish the final book in his Conquistador Trilogy.
That grief trip quickly curdles into a witch story, a murder mystery, and a guilt-soaked ghost tale. Neon’s release also arrived with momentum: Damian McCarthy’s horror film debuted with $6.4 million on 1,885 screens, after opening in theaters on May 1, 2026.
The result is a movie built around an ugly question. Can a cruel man survive hell long enough to become human again?
Hokum Release, Streaming Status, and Box Office
Hokum is currently a theatrical release. Decider’s May 1, 2026, streaming rundown listed the movie as unavailable on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or Hulu at launch. It also identified Neon as the release company, with Hulu expected later because of Neon’s distribution pipeline.
However, no Hulu streaming date has been confirmed. Decider also projected a possible Hulu window between three and six months after the theatrical release, with September 2026 presented as an early possibility rather than a set date.
Deadline’s indie box-office coverage gave the movie a strong opening figure for an original horror title. Neon’s Hokum, starring Adam Scott and directed by McCarthy, debuted with $6.4 million on 1,885 screens.
Cast and Creators in Hokum
The confirmed cast centers on Adam Scott as Ohm Bauman, an author whose bitterness covers decades of unresolved guilt. Damian McCarthy wrote and directed the film after Oddity, and Neon handled the U.S. theatrical release.
- Adam Scott as Ohm Bauman, the American writer at the center of the story.
- Peter Coonan as Mal, the concierge tied to Fiona’s disappearance.
- Florence Ordesh as Fiona, the hotel bartender who treats Ohm with more patience than he earns.
- David Wilmot as Jerry, a vagabond who speaks about mushrooms and the ghostly plane.
- Will O’Connell as the bellhop who spikes Ohm’s drink after Ohm humiliates him.
- Brendan Conroy as Cob, the hotel owner linked to the locked honeymoon suite legend.
- Austin Amelio as the Conquistador, the lead character in Ohm’s unfinished novel.
- Damian McCarthy as writer-director, following his previous film Oddity.
Other source material also references Cob’s son-in-law Mal, Fiona the bartender, Jack the Jackass, and the Cailleach of Irish folklore. No hometowns, ages, or occupations beyond those role details were confirmed in the accessible sources.
The Locked-Room Horror Story
Ohm reaches a small Irish inn carrying his parents’ ashes and his own contempt. He is also trying to complete the last entry in the Conquistador Trilogy, a bleak story about a treasure hunter, a bottle, and a young guide.
At the hotel, Cob tells a local legend about the honeymoon suite. The story says a witch was trapped there, so the room remains locked. Ohm dismisses the warning as hokum, which naturally makes the title a dare.
SlashFilm’s Devin Meenan framed that setup as a spiritual cousin to The Twilight Zone episode “The Howling Man.” Charles Beaumont adapted that 66-year-old story from his own prose, with David Ellington, played by H.M. Wynant, discovering a howling prisoner, played by Robin Hughes, inside a monastery.
In that episode, the monks say the prisoner is the Devil in human form. In Hokum, the imprisoned evil is probably a witch. The comparison works because both stories place supernatural danger behind a door and then test whether an outsider will believe the locals.
What the Ending Says About Ohm Bauman
Inverse’s interview with Scott and McCarthy makes Ohm’s unpleasantness central, not incidental. Scott admitted he worried about pushing the character too far: “Oh God, I hope they can stay with this guy.”
McCarthy described the emotional track more directly: “It’s all about working his way back; winning back the audience.” That matters because Ohm is not simply abrasive. He is carrying a childhood trauma that shaped his entire adult life.
Ohm accidentally shot his mother with his father’s revolver when he was a child. He was too young for a conviction, but he still lived for decades with the guilt. His father later drank himself into an early grave, which turns the movie’s supernatural punishment into a psychological trial.
The plot also uses Fiona’s disappearance as the engine for the mystery. Ohm enters the long-shuttered honeymoon suite while looking for clues. Inside, the film piles on a fading lantern, phantoms, Fiona’s decomposing body in a dumbwaiter, and footage of Jack the Jackass speaking through an old television.
Some of those visions come after Ohm drinks goat’s milk spiked with hallucinogenic mushrooms. Yet the movie does not reduce everything to hallucination. The witch, identified with the Cailleach in Irish folklore, is treated as a real force that chains victims and drags them toward the underworld.
Mal’s crimes sharpen the human side of the horror. He was having an affair with Fiona, she became pregnant, and her decision to keep the baby threatened his standing in the town. That makes him a murderer before the underworld comes for him.
The Bleaker Ending That Did Not Happen
Hokum almost ended in a much colder place. McCarthy told Inverse, “In the original scripts, he doesn’t survive.” He added that Ohm “doesn’t make it out of the basement at all.”
The earlier ending would have left Ohm trapped in the dumbwaiter, hoping to escape before the witch captured him. McCarthy changed course because, in his words, “It just felt too bleak.”
Instead, Ohm survives after his mother’s specter encourages him to forgive himself. He breaks his chains with a file and escapes as the sole survivor and witness to Mal’s crimes.
That survival also changes the ending of the Conquistador Trilogy. McCarthy explained that the Conquistador’s American accent connects him to Ohm’s father. The bottle becomes a metaphor for alcoholism, and the ram skull signals hope.
Why Hokum Works as Folk Horror
McCarthy’s film uses Irish folklore without turning the mythology into homework. SlashFilm noted that the witch remains barely glimpsed for much of the film, which keeps the fear tactile and uncertain.
The chalk circle also matters. Ohm draws it as a mundane barrier against supernatural evil, and that image connects Hokum to older locked-room horror traditions. McCarthy has said, “I was always drawn to the idea of making a horror film about a witch and putting my own Irish slant on it.”
USA Today’s Brian Truitt also highlighted Scott’s jump-scare reaction while discussing one chilling scene, with the headline noting that it made the actor “audibly yelp.” That detail fits the movie’s strongest trick: it makes a familiar haunted-room premise feel physically immediate.
Hokum is therefore not just Adam Scott trying on horror. It is a story about guilt, folklore, and the possibility of mercy after years of self-punishment. The movie is playing in theaters now, while its streaming future remains unconfirmed.
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