Tags: blog, film, horror, 2026

Date: Monday September 14th, 2026

's alright

Poster for the film Hokum. A collage of pictures of people. The largest is of a white middle aged man in a dingy brown raincoat with his back to the camera. The image is flipped vertically so he appears twice in the poster, once upside down. There are also a lot of dimly lit headshots of other characters as well as a bright red love-heart keyring.

Hokum is the rarest of rare things, a horror movie I find merely 'ok'.

Horror movies are usually love or loathe for me. They either get under my skin and creep me out or, much more commonly, absolutely infuriate me and insult my intelligence.

Hokum does neither of these things. It's perfectly well constructed, the plot moves along at a decent pace, it know not to insult it's audience by treating them like idiots. The jump scares are a bit predictable, but work anyway, it's decently creepy. Adam Scott plays a complete arsehole but knows how to do it without making his character irredeemable.

But it all adds up and amounts to not very much. There's nothing here that get's under the skin. It never gets really nasty and never boils over. Tension builds but never explodes.

At the end there's an undercurrent of the Magdelane laundries, a genuine real life horror from Ireland's recent past that's far, far worse than anything in this film. It's a faint and brief connection, possibly I'm reaching too far, maybe there's some clearer signposting that I missed, but the rest of the plot does nothing to link to it. Either specifically or tonally so it adds nothing to the film.

A perfunctory, well made horror. Nothing more, nothing less.

A man and a woman stood behind the reception desk at an old fashioned, dingy, Irish hotel. The scene is dimly lit by a dull table lamp of to the side. She is wearing a shaggy, brown rabbit costume. He is wearing a dull, grey suit.

's alright

Poster Credit Where to Watch