The year’s best Irish thriller is now available to stream at home

Headlined by a Hollywood star and featuring one of the leads of Love/Hate, the thriller has landed on streaming at the perfect time.

Staying in a nearby hotel, Ohm initially wants to be left completely alone. Yet, the writer gradually finds himself pulled into a strange mystery involving the disappearance of one of the building's staff and rumours of an ancient witch haunting the honeymoon suite.

Hokum is only the third feature from Irish writer-director Damian McCarthy. Yet, he's already established himself as one of the country's best working filmmakers.

In 2020, he made his debut with the supremely creepy low-budget horror Caveat. McCarthy followed this in 2024 with his breakthrough movie, Oddity, a brilliantly gothic ghost story, full of terrifying totems and ghoulish Hitchcockian wit.

JOE's review of Irish horror thriller movie Hokum

The horror thriller Hokum feels like a companion piece to Caveat and Oddity. It's another ghost story shot in West Cork. Also, like Oddity, it features a haunting bellhop figure (a standout Will O'Connell), and a narrative that jumps backwards and forwards in time and between characters; a structure that keeps the surprises coming constantly and quickly.

That said, whereas Oddity was perhaps set-piece first, character second, Hokum feels like the opposite. It's a storytelling choice that feels intentional, given that its lead character is a novelist. Indeed, the movie features scenes depicting what Ohm has written, a device which provides a striking opening to Hokum and a surprisingly moving denouement.

As mentioned above, there are brief moments in McCarthy's latest that switch from Scott's character's POV to the supporting players. These include the hotel's paranormal-enthusiast bartender Fiona (a charismatic Florence Ordesh), the hotel's beleaguered manager (a well-cast Peter Coonan, Love/Hate), and the hermit who lives in the nearby woods, Jerry (the always incredible David Wilmot, Lies We Tell).

While these narrative change-ups are welcome and often ingenious, what's most impressive is how focused Hokum stays on the character of Ohm.

At first, the novelist is presented as quite unlikeable. He's cold. He's rude to the staff. Early on, he even assaults a fawning fan of his with a spoon.

Even the title Hokum comes from something Ohm says curtly and condescendingly under his breath. This is as the hotel staff talk excitedly about the building's reported ghost sightings.

However, thanks to McCarthy's clever writing and the way he unfolds information, as well as the inherent likability of Scott, the viewer is always compelled by Ohm. In fact, we wind up deeply caring about the author.

Like Oddity, the writer-director throws many different characters and plot threads at the audience. There's the question of whether Ohm can overcome his trauma. This plotline also becomes entangled in a ghost story mystery that blends Irish myth with everyday evil, some of which harkens back to the country's more recent dark past.

On top of this, there's a mélange of different tones. The movie blends horror and thriller elements, with authentic human drama and strange gallows humour. There's a recurring gag involving goats in the nearby forest ingesting psychedelic mushrooms, which is very, very funny.

This all may sound convoluted. Yet, it ties together beautifully onscreen, aside from maybe one late-in-the-game reveal that recontextualises some of what came before, in a way that may make viewers' heads spin.

Plus, when Hokum embraces haunted house spectacle in its second half, as Scott's protagonist (slightly inexplicably) ventures deeper and deeper into the bowels of the hotel in search of answers, it's properly, hair-raisingly scary.

JOE interview with Adam Scott and Damian McCarthy for Hokum

Ahead of Hokum's cinema release last May, JOE spoke to the film's star, Adam Scott, and its writer-director, Damian McCarthy.

During the conversation, Scott was full of praise for West Cork, which is McCarthy's birthplace and where he has shot his three features to date.

The Severance star said of the area: "Oh, it was amazing. One of the most beautiful places I've ever been... Probably the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen.

"The weather is always shifting down there. I would go on a walk, and it would go from pouring rain to a light drizzle to sunshine, and then back to cloudy.

"Whenever I had time, I would just get lost on this estate I was staying on, the Liss Ard estate down in Skibbereen. I just loved it. It was beautiful, and the people were just the best.

"[There] was always a great conversation waiting for you when you'd stop and talk to someone. Everyone's so kind and really smart. Smart people there in Ireland."

McCarthy, meanwhile, explained how the unexpected collaboration between him and Scott came about.

"Well, I've just been a fan of Adam's forever. When it looked like Hokum was actually going to happen, we started talking about who this could be, and it was a coincidence for me that I was finishing watching [Scott's show] Severance," he told us.

"I was just blown away by it... I was thinking: 'Well, that performance was amazing.'

"Sometimes you just get lucky. [Adam] had seen Oddity, and I was able to get the script to him... We wanted to approach the film in the same way and the character in the same way."

McCarthy also noted that Ohm is a "challenging" figure in several aspects and required a "very watchable" actor to play him.

"[In Hokum], once you get past that first act, there's a lot of time where it's just the actor alone. There's no dialogue, there's no voiceover, there's no screen partner," the director told JOE.

"So, you need somebody who's very, very watchable that can carry all of that. Watching Adam over the years, I said: 'Well, that would be very interesting'.

"There's also the fact that the character starts off quite unlikable, and then they have to kind of win the audience back as they go along.

"In the variety of Adam's body of work... [he has] played quite mean characters, but there's also that comedic element to him as well.

"With everything there, I said: 'This would be the perfect person to partner up with and do this,' and it worked out."

How to watch and where is it streaming?

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Hokum is streaming on Prime Video in Ireland and the UK. Viewers in the United States can also watch the Irish thriller on Hulu.