Hokum Overlook – Damian McCarthy’s Hokum blends jump-scare precision with dark humor, turning an Irish inn into both comic set piece and fear engine—exactly the kind of crowd-pleasing horror Overlook is built for.
Overlook Film Festival 2026 is bringing some of the year’s most anticipated horror energy to the surface, and Damian McCarthy’s Hokum arrives with a rare confidence: it’s funny on purpose, and frightening on command.
The film’s setup—an Irish inn. a grieving novelist scattering his dead parents’ ashes. and a writer who’d rather hide than feel—could easily collapse into the familiar “competent haunted-house” rut.. Misryoum sees why that matters: genre audiences are flooded with variations of the same dread mechanics. and the ones that survive in theaters are usually the ones with distinct tonal control.. Hokum doesn’t just balance laughs and screams; it seems to run both engines from the same blueprint. keeping the comedy sharp enough that it never drains the horror. and keeping the fear intense enough that the jokes land like pressure releases rather than distractions.
Adam Scott plays Ohm Bauman, and Misryoum can’t ignore how unusual the protagonist feels.. Ohm isn’t written as an easy-to-root-for comfort character.. He’s abrasive. prickly. and emotionally difficult in the early stretches. a choice that turns the story’s psychological hinge into something more active than passive character sympathy.. Scott leans into that discomfort without sanding it down. and the resulting arc—an evolution from avoidance into confrontation—gives the film an emotional spine that haunted houses often lack.
The Irish setting is doing more than serving atmosphere.. McCarthy’s production design builds the inn as a period-specific pressure cooker: intimate, aged, and crowded with implied histories.. Misryoum reads the space as a form of character design too.. Every corner feels like it holds a story that predates the plot. which is why the comedy plays out with tactile texture—like you’re watching a ritual happen in a lived-in room.. Even the film’s structure feels tethered to place. with the basement reserved as the escalation zone. a classic horror map updated with a modern sense of craft.
There’s also the technical question horror fans always ask—how does it land?. Hokum’s centerpiece jump scare isn’t treated like a throwaway shock.. The filmmaking language around it is purposeful: the camera’s behavior. the editing tempo. and the sound design coordinate so tightly that the moment briefly turns the audience into collaborators. the kind of collective reaction where people gasp and then. almost immediately. laugh because the trick worked too well.. Misryoum’s cultural takeaway is simple: in an era of algorithmic viewing habits. communal theater scares still function as a shared ritual. and Hokum seems built for it.
Tonally, Hokum evokes an odd but persuasive blend—dark horror with a measured, almost stylized wit.. Misryoum senses the influence of earlier traditions that treated fear as craft rather than chaos. including the enduring appeal of Irish horror atmosphere and the classic visual grammar associated with mid-century genre cinema.. That “elegant shot. then breathless reaction” feeling nods toward the tradition of horror cinema that designs surprises as sequences. not accidents.. The result is a film that can look quaint while threatening you. a contradiction that sounds like a gimmick until it’s executed with discipline.
Still, Misryoum also registers a friction point.. At moments. the film oscillates between being thematically precise and being a touch too explicit—like it occasionally reveals the scaffolding a beat early.. The trauma-informed architecture. the addiction subtext. and the story’s framing of depression and writer’s block as psychological collapse mostly land with real weight.. But occasionally a metaphor holds slightly too long. or signals itself a touch too neatly. reminding viewers that even a confident director is still managing the tightrope between suggestion and statement.
Even with that minor mismatch. Hokum’s strengths add up quickly: the jokes land with economy. the scares land harder. and the runtime feels tight in the way that suggests editing decisions were made to protect momentum rather than stretch set pieces.. The supporting cast and David Wilmot’s contributions help carve out a world where humor doesn’t undercut dread; it complicates it.. And Adam Scott’s performance—rooted in a protagonist who doesn’t simply “learn his lesson” but must endure his own emotional reality—keeps the film from turning purely into atmosphere.
For Overlook Film Festival 2026. Hokum reads less like a niche horror offering and more like a statement about how horror comedy can still feel like cinema rather than content.. Misryoum believes that’s why the film’s theater pitch matters: a crowd changes how fear travels. and Hokum’s design—especially its most engineered moments—seems to anticipate the collective gasp and the laugh that follows.
If Misryoum’s cultural radar is right, this could become the kind of horror hit that sticks not only for its scares, but for its tonal intelligence—its ability to make dread and laughter share the same corridor. Hokum opens in US theaters May 1, 2026 via Neon.
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