If ‘Hokum’ Gave You Chills, Here Are 7 Horror Films That Hit the Same Dark Notes

Damian McCarthy’s ‘Hokum’ has officially arrived to haunt the multiplex, and it turns out the Irish filmmaker brought something genuinely terrifying with him. The Gothic supernatural horror premiered at the South by Southwest Film and TV Festival on March 14, 2026, and was released in the United States by Neon on May 1, 2026. Adam Scott leads the film as Ohm Bauman, a reclusive novelist drawn to a cursed inn, and the combination of folk legend, psychological pressure, and old-school dread has horror fans absolutely buzzing.

Neon’s Adam Scott-starring film debuted with $6.4 million on 1,885 screens, a solid start for the witchy tale with a $5 million budget set in a creepy Irish inn. ‘Hokum’ is Certified Fresh at 86% on Rotten Tomatoes with an 82% Popcornmeter and a B CinemaScore, a combination that has become increasingly rare in modern horror. If you walked out of the theater unable to shake it, here is your survival guide of films that hit nearly identical notes.

The Folk Horror Roots That Make ‘Hokum’ So Deeply Unsettling

Rotten Tomatoes’ critical consensus calls ‘Hokum’ a classic haunted house story enriched with atmospheric folklore and perfectly-timed shocks, noting it further solidifies writer-director Damian McCarthy as a modern master of horror. That emphasis on folklore is not accidental, and it places the film firmly in a lineage of horror that treats rural myth as something genuinely dangerous rather than decorative.

‘Midsommar’ is similar to ‘Hokum’ in its use of a serene setting for scary turns, with some very unsettling aspects that make it one of the strangest and most effective scary movies in recent memory, playing out like the twisted fusion of ‘The Wicker Man’ and ‘Hereditary’. Both films weaponize communal ritual and wide open spaces to create a claustrophobia that has nothing to do with walls.

Films like ‘Hokum’ are defined by a sense of unavoidable doom and the chilling reality of generational trauma, with each title exploring the thin veil between reality and madness while offering narratives that echo the atmospheric depth and intellectual tension found in Damian McCarthy’s supernatural exploration. ‘The Babadook’, directed by Jennifer Kent, fits neatly into this bracket, using the supernatural as a skin for grief that refuses to be buried.

Damian McCarthy’s Horror Legacy and Why It Matters Right Now

‘Hokum’ is McCarthy’s third feature after the independent ‘Caveat’ in 2020 and the Shudder production ‘Oddity’ in 2024, and finds the writer-director breaking into Hollywood with a major release courtesy of Neon. That trajectory is remarkable for someone who built his reputation on micro-budget Irish productions.

‘Oddity’ also has an impressive Rotten Tomatoes score, with a 96% Certified Fresh rating based on 132 reviews, and with all three of his films McCarthy has carved out a space for himself as one of the masters of the horror genre, crafting modern nightmares that also tell compelling stories. Going back to watch ‘Caveat’ and ‘Oddity’ back to back is essentially like taking a masterclass in practical dread.

This is McCarthy’s third feature, and so far every one of his movies has improved on the last, with all three being supernatural morality tales with themes of guilt and punishment, an interest in folklore, and a fixation on creepy dolls. That thematic consistency is the mark of a director who knows exactly what he is building, making ‘Oddity’ the most essential companion piece to ‘Hokum’ currently available.

Atmospheric Haunted Hotel Horror Worth Booking a Room In

The movies most similar to ‘Hokum’ include ‘Oddity’, ‘Housebound’, and ‘1408’, with ‘1408’ echoing it through a writer, a haunted hotel room, disturbing visions, and personal trauma. Stephen King’s source material for ‘1408’ and McCarthy’s original screenplay share an almost uncanny structural DNA, with both centering on a skeptical male protagonist slowly undone by a room that refuses to behave.

Although McCarthy faintly winks at Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’, the ultimate haunted hotel film, particularly with his tormented alcoholic writer character and Joseph Bishara’s haunting score of choral moans, he does not resort to direct homages. That restraint is exactly what makes ‘Hokum’ feel fresh rather than derivative, though it also makes ‘The Shining’ an obvious and deeply rewarding double feature.

Venerable works of horror, from ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ in 1968 to ‘The Babadook’ in 2011, find ways to take internal psychological concerns and externalize them, and ‘Hokum’ thrives on its character work with McCarthy’s smart script and Scott’s layered performance tying each facet of the story to Ohm in some way. Rewatching ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ through that lens reveals just how deep McCarthy’s cinematic roots actually run.

Irish Supernatural Horror That Scratches Exactly the Same Itch

‘The Hallow’ is a British-Irish horror film directed by Corin Hardy in which a family is forced to fight demonic creatures for survival after they move into a remote millhouse in Ireland, combining body horror with traditional folklore in a way that feels fresh and terrifying, building from a quiet family drama into a frantic fight for survival against the forest. The rural Irish landscape does a lot of heavy lifting in both films, functioning almost as a sentient antagonist.

Damian McCarthy shares a sensibility with Mike Flanagan, which makes films like ‘Oculus’ ideal after you finish ‘Hokum’, starring Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites as siblings stuck in a cycle surrounding a supposedly haunted mirror, with the deliberate pacing and ambiguous touches enticing anyone who enjoyed the way ‘Hokum’ plays with expectation and only slowly reveals more about the supernatural force at play in the film.

Flanagan’s television work, particularly ‘The Haunting of Hill House’, extends that same patient terror across a longer canvas.

Both ‘Hokum’ and ‘The Innocents’ are movies that thrive when they get the chance to take their time, delving into the characters and their various complexities, with ‘The Innocents’ considered a spiritual predecessor to films like ‘The Others’ and arguably even ‘Hokum’. McCarthy’s films get a little bigger in scale with each entry, and ‘Hokum’ marks his first collaboration with a Hollywood actor, suggesting that wherever this filmmaker goes next, the scale and ambition will only keep growing.

That upward trajectory is exactly what makes keeping a close eye on what comes next from McCarthy so exciting, and if you have already burned through every film on this list, the question now is which of these atmospheric folk horror recommendations you plan to revisit first.