This is a subjective claim, but the first act of Damian McCarthy’s 2024 chiller, Oddity, is the scariest horror film of the past decade. Every moment spent in that foyer is just a masterclass in the use of shadow and patience. His third feature, this year’s Hokum, doesn’t quite reach those highs, but it still delivers more (and better) scares than most Hollywood horrors can muster.
Hokum got a bit lost amid 2026’s big genre success stories like Obsession and Backrooms, but it’s a film that arguably works even better in the comfort of your own dark living room. The unsettling tale of a dickish writer visiting a haunted Irish inn was recently released to home video with some engaging behind-the-scenes extras and an equally informative commentary track with McCarthy.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Hokum (2026)
Commentator: Damian McCarthy (writer/director)
1. The initial script he turned into producers “wasn’t very good,” but helpful notes on tightening up the story made it both better and more marketable.
2. Spooky Pictures was the first production house to come onboard the film, and McCarthy was pleased to discover that they have offices in Abu Dhabi because it made finding and accessing a desert location for the film’s bookends incredibly easy.
3. The conquistador is played by Austin Amelio, and McCarthy just loved his face after seeing him in The Walking Dead. “It’s not historically accurate,” to have an American in the role, but it works because the character is essentially Ohm Bauman’s (Adam Scott) stand-in for his father.
4. The intercut shots of Ohm during the desert opening were pickups as test audiences were confused and thought it was a prologue rather than simply the story that Ohm is writing.
5. “The skull of such a beast would mean hope” is glimpsed being written by Ohm in the opening, and McCarthy wants people to hold onto that and realize that the film’s ending with the shot of the goat skull “signifies hope and that things are going to be okay.”
6. The magazine cover at 7:24 offers a tribute to assistant director Jim Corr, who died between filming and post-production. The middle story at the bottom of the page says “Jim Corr: The Life of a Legend.”
7. The film’s inn is actually a private residence that the production design team refitted. Interior shots are a mix of the house’s actual insides and a soundstage while the basement scenes were filmed in the basement of Castlefreke in West Cork. Every time he says the name I only hear Castle Freak, and honestly, it makes it seem even creepier.
8. The dead goat at 9:48 is fake and originally had an animatronic head with a lolling tongue, but “it was very strange stuff, and we just got rid of it.”
9. “That’s every usable frame of those two kids,” he says regarding the two-second glimpse we see at 10:38 of the boys being told a story by the old man. It’s a slight exaggeration as we see a couple more very quick glimpses of them shortly after.
10. The creepy little kiddie figurines were made by Paul McDonnell. Getting them to look just right “was one of the trickiest things in the film.” He also designed the wooden man in Oddity.
11. The desk bell on the counter is the same one from Oddity. “I bought that bell years ago at an antique shop,” he says. “I just liked it.”
12. The desk clerk is played by Peter Coonan, and he’s a sweaty, fumbling mess by design. McCarthy told the actor that Tony Goldwyn’s character in Ghost was his primary reference. He’s a villain, but there’s not a single cool thing about him. “Even when the mask slips and we realize that this guy’s horrible, you don’t suddenly become cool.”
13. The bunny from McCarthy’s first film, Caveat, makes a cameo at 18:02, and the actors holding it actually play the couple who kill each other in that film. “So I guess this takes place before Caveat.”
14. He’d been watching a lot of Gene Hackman movies while writing Hokum, so he originally had the character of Ohm dressed similarly to Popeye Doyle right down to the pork pie hat. “I think it was Adam’s only real note, he was like “how married are you to that pork pie hat?’” McCarthy cut it from the script.
15. We get two quick examples in succession of beats that McCarthy felt were great in the moment but soon realized were just too unnecessary. First, Alby (Will O’Connell) the bellboy looking into the darkness behind the gate at 22:32 originally ended with the witch suddenly appearing right up next to him. Seemed like a good scare, but McCarthy realized that he was showing too much of her too early. Second, when the bellboy is talking to an obviously perturbed and uninterested Ohm, the writer originally said that asking him about writing was like asking Sisyphus about his boulder. “I thought it was very clever, and I seem smart,” but Scott wisely pointed out that him saying that would essentially be an invitation to Alby to keep the conversation going.
16. The book in Ohm’s hand at 35:43 is written by D. Odello, which is a nod to the character of Darcy Odello in Oddity. She’s a witch interested in occult items, so McCarthy thought “wouldn’t it be cool if she maybe wrote a book at some stage.” He adds that “nobody cares,” but he enjoys tying his films together in various ways. I care, Mr. McCarthy. I care.
17. The shot of Jerry (David Wilmot) at 40:51 came about because McCarthy had just seen the trailer for Longlegs and loved the image of Nicolas Cage’s character in an odd pose. “It’s a little bit of a steal,” but he wanted his characters to find a physicality at times and this felt like inspiration.
18. McCarthy offers up some advice for hopeful horror filmmakers, and it boils down to a need to watch all kinds of films, not just horror. He says taking note of angles, lighting, mirrors, and more gives you a bigger inventory of images and views that you can weaponize to make something scary.
19. The dumbwaiter isn’t real, and the shaft is actually a horizontal construction. Camera angles, flipped images, and performers “acting against gravity” help complete the illusion.
20. The chair at 55:04 is McCarthy’s equivalent to Sam Raimi’s 1973 Oldsmobile. “It became the central prop in Caveat, and again it was used in the antique shop in Oddity,” and now it’s here in his third feature, too.
21. McCarthy knows his writing is on point when he himself gets a little creeped out by it and starts glancing over his shoulder. He thinks it’s a mistake to try and write something strictly to scare someone else, adding “it has to scare you first.”
22. The shot at 57:54 features a ghostly woman over Ohm’s shoulder, and it originally had a music stinger to accentuate it. McCarthy, though, like too few horror directors, realized that “there’s something so much creepier about the audience having to find her.”
23. “The timing of” the scare at 59:53 – Ohm walks through a doorway and the ghost woman is right on his heels – was incredibly tricky. Early versions moved too fast or held too long on him, but McCarthy and editor Brian Philip Davis played around and discovered that adjusting things even by a single frame or two sometimes determined whether or not it was scary.
24. McCarthy maintains a strict uncertainty as to whether there are actually supernatural events at foot in the inn – he believes there are, but he wants it to feel vague and explainable either way until the ending. One example is the shot of Ohm watching the creepy Jack character on TV reading his childhood letter. He’s seeing it, but when we see him watching, the reflection in his glasses is just static.
25. The cut to Ohm sitting at the table at 1:02:33 is a little nod to Ash (Bruce Campbell) doing the same in Evil Dead II between moments of terror. McCarthy does it again when Ohm takes a seat in the basement and plays the tape recorder of someone’s very frightened voice.
26. “I don’t think I’ve ever gone over filming,” he says, but that changed while filming the basement scenes here. They only had two days at the castle location, and he ended up going a half hour over their scheduled time.
27. The tunnel lights go out at 1:11:00, but early cuts left them on allowing viewers to see the witch as she walked down the corridor towards Ohm’s POV. It just didn’t work for McCarthy, though, as “it had the feeling of Darth Vader walking down a brightly lit hall.” It wasn’t until late in the edit that he decided to shut off the lights and have only the sounds of her approach in the darkness.
28. The full bathtub was added to the room because McCarthy realized that Ohm would otherwise end the film looking like not much had happened to him. Dunking him in the dirty water ensured that wouldn’t happen.
29. One criticism I have of the entire sequence with Ohm stuck in the honeymoon suite and Jerry outside is that Ohm never breaks the goddamn window to get Jerry’s attention. McCarthy mentions that early drafts had him doing just that, albeit with the convoluted inclusion of a bottle with a note inside, but he cut it as he couldn’t make it work in the scene. “There was no kind of room to lean into sound design or score to build any tension.”
30. McCarthy’s script originally ended with Ohm stuck in the dumbwaiter and writing his final thoughts on his laptop. “It felt bleak,” he says, adding that there are brilliantly made horror films with downer endings, and he rarely goes back to watch them. “Oh that’s excellent, I never want to see it again.”
31. The film ends on the hopeful note of the goat skull and the redemption of this “father” and “son” stand-ins, and McCarthy chose a cover of the hymn “I’m Going Home” by Cork Sacred Harp Singers. His goal was a “very joyous, positive, upbeat feeling to the end of the movie.”
32. He’s a fan of filmmaker commentaries, and he hopes his is even a little bit educational for people looking to make their own movies.
Quotes Without Context
“This is very rushed.”
“Make it Michael Mann-inspired.”
“Crews are always much happier with you when you’re decisive.”
“There was a time that I was the only fan of this scene.”
“You’d be surprised how tricky it is for some actors to act startled.”
“I like the kind of real basic horror – ‘there’s something behind you.’”
“Maybe the film just ends here like a downbeat episode of The Twilight Zone.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
